Tinker Tailor Totally Spies
by MarcvsVipsanivsAgrippa
Summary: Jerry's dead, Sam's gone, and WOOHP is under new management. Clover's been kicked out, and now that she's graduated from Mali-U she isn't sure if she has a future. But when a missing WOOHP spy reappears with a damning secret she's brought back into the spy world for the most important mission of her life. Based off of John le Carre's novel.
1. Dramatis Personae

_**Totally**_ ** _Spies!_** **belongs to Marathon Media.** ** _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_** **belongs to John le Carre. No copyright infringement is intended.**

 **Author's Note:** This is my first fanfiction and my first work as a creative writer, so constructive reviews, criticisms, and suggestions are all appreciated. That includes reviews, criticisms, and suggestions constructive to my morale as well as my technique.

This fanfiction, as stated in the summary, will be a more or less a retelling of John le Carre's classic spy novel _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ , only set in the universe and with the characters of _Totally Spies!_ Since I borrow only the plot of _Tinker Tailor_ , and not the characters or the setting, this will be filed as a _Totally Spies!_ fanfiction, not a crossover.

For those of you who don't want spoilers, please do not read the novel or watch its TV and film adaptations before reading this work. For those of you who have read the book and/or watched the show/film, please don't spoil it in the reviews.

On that note, I highly encourage everyone to read the novel and watch its adaptations after this work is finished - they're all excellent. Although this work may have spoiled them by then, their sheer artistic quality makes them infinitely worthy of a look at the least - which cannot, alas, be said for this fanfiction.

Speaking of this fanfiction, it will consist of four parts: a Prologue (Sam's Mission), Part 1 (Dean's Mission), Part 2 (Alex's Mission), and Part 3 (Clover's Mission). This first chapter (the _Dramatis Personae)_ will introduce the setting and the OCs and set up the rest of the story - or the Prologue, at least.

 _Tinker Tailor_ has a very complex plot and I fear my writing will only make it worse, so if you have questions or feel confused, please ask in a review or a PM and I will try to get back to you.

Without further ado:

* * *

 _ **Dramatis Personae**_

* * *

 _World Organization of Human Protection_

 _Internal Information Network_

 _Login ID: lewisjerry_

 _Password: **********_

 _[...]_

 _Password ACCEPTED_

 _Login SUCCESSFUL: LEWIS, Gerald_

 _Current Date: November — , 201—_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Organization File: World Organization of Human Protection_

The **World Organization of Human Protection** ( **WOOHP** ) is an international law enforcement and counterterrorism agency. Founded in 197— by its current Director, Gerald "Jerry" Lewis (refer to Personal File: LEWIS, Gerald James), WOOHP is funded by and operates under the authority of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (DPA) and reports to the UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection, who is responsible for approving the WOOHP budget and the appointment of senior officers as well as providing broad policy objectives and relaying general goals set by the UN General Assembly and Security Council. Charged with the protection of the world from extraordinary global threats and assisting the law enforcement agencies of UN member-states with matters of international concern, WOOHP has branches on all seven continents and in over 150 countries, where it operates with the knowledge and consent of local authorities.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File: LEWIS, Gerald James_

 **Name:** Gerald James Lewis (AKA Jerry Lewis)

 **Occupation:** Director, World Organization of Human Protection

 **Age:** 67

 **Nationality:** British (English)

 **Profile:**

Gerald James "Jerry" Lewis is the current Director of the World Organization of Human Protection. Having founded WOOHP in 197— _,_ he has been responsible for many if the enormous operational successes enjoyed by the organization in its several decades of activity, primarily with respect to the capture of various "villains".

 _[...]_

Lately, Jerry's continued leadership of WOOHP has been called into question, both by WOOHP's overseers at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs and by WOOHP officers and personnel at all levels of the agency. This is due not only to his advanced age and declining health, but also in large part to a recent exceptionally long and damaging series of operational failures, including (but by no means limited to) the murder of a network of WOOHP informers operating in the Ayagami Japanese Yakuza clan (refer to Operational File: Clockwork), the failure of a joint WOOHP-Mexican attempt to capture a senior leader of the Los Leones drug cartel (refer to Operational File: White Thunder), and the catastrophic failure of a raid on a drug warehouse in Peru operated by the Santo Rojo drug cartel, in which 3 WOOHP spies, 31 WOOHP agents, and 17 civilians were killed (refer to Operational File: Horoscope).

 _[...]_

Though Jerry's services in keeping the world safe from the likes of Doctor Gelee, Candy Sweet, the LAMOS, and other "villains" is remembered with deep gratitude and valued with the utmost appreciation, many in WOOHP and at the UN have begun to reevaluate his future at WOOHP and reassess the effectiveness of leadership at fighting the highly sophisticated and organized criminal networks threatening world safety at the present, as opposed to the amateurish and unprofessional, if unusually well-funded and equipped, "villains" whose arrests characterized his successes in the past. As such, there are currently unconfirmed rumors that the Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection has discreetly begun searching for candidates to succeed Jerry as Director of WOOHP and is considering asking him to retire for reasons of age and health.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Organization File: The ETOKA Syndicate_

The **ETOKA Syndicate** (referred to as **ETOKA** or simply " **the Syndicate** ") is the largest international organized criminal group in the world. Operating in over 160 countries and on all continents except Antarctica, the Syndicate is estimated to control, by itself, 20% of the world's organized crime and has business ties to almost every major criminal organization in existence. Founded by French crime boss Edouard Vilane in 1968, the ETOKA Syndicate is, at present, identified by the UN DPA as the largest illegal threat to global safety and stability and as such constitutes WOOHP's top priority target. Its activities include, but are not limited to:

1\. Extortion

2\. Fraud

3\. Money laundering

4\. Fencing of stolen goods

5\. Racketeering

6\. Arms trafficking and distribution

7\. Drug trafficking and distribution

8\. Corrupting public officials

9\. Human trafficking

10\. Prostitution

11\. Murder

12\. Theft and armed robbery

13\. Piracy

14\. Kidnapping

15\. Trafficking contraband goods

16\. Illegal gambling

17\. Stock market manipulation

18\. Document forgery

 _[...]_

ETOKA's current strength is estimated at approximately 94,500 members worldwide, broken down by nation as follows: . . .

 _[...]_

Since 2000, the ETOKA Syndicate has been responsible for the deaths of 217 WOOHP agents (refer to list of Personal Files on pages 47-60), 26 WOOHP spies (refer to list of Personal Files on pages 61-62), and an estimated over 1,000 civilians. Of the 702 WOOHP operations that have targeted or otherwise involved the ETOKA Syndicate since 2000 (refer to list of Operational Files on pages 63-83), 321 have ended in failure, with 51 of those failures being catastrophic in nature.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File: ALISTER, Patrick_

 **Name:** Patrick Alister

 **Occupation:** Deputy Director, WOOHP

 **Age:** 55

 **Nationality:** British (Scottish)

 **Profile:**

Patrick Alister is the current Deputy Director of WOOHP, making him the _de facto_ second-in-command of the organization. He joined WOOHP in 198— as an agent in the plainclothes rank-and-file Agents Section (commonly referred to as "the WOOHP Agents" or as "the Men in Black") and was quickly promoted to leadership positions in the Agents Section and in WOOHP's Operations Section.

 _[...]_

Patrick enjoyed substantial success as an agent, but his leadership record while in the Operations Section is mixed. Nevertheless Patrick is highly regarded by WOOHP's supervisors at the UN DPA for his belief in focusing on informer networks and intelligence gathering as the primary approach to international crime fighting. These views place him (and, by extension, his allies in the UN) at odds with WOOHP Director Jerry Lewis, who has long believed in direct action and favors the catsuit-clad Spy Section as WOOHP's principal operational arm.

 _[...]_

Recently, Patrick's management of a highly successful network of informers at the heart of the ETOKA leadership (refer to Operational File: Magic) has made him enormously influential among both the WOOHP rank-and-file and with many senior and mid-level officials at the DPA. Operation Magic's chief informer, codenamed "Wizard" (real identity restricted for security reasons), has produced large quantities of high grade intelligence for use as evidence in WOOHP prosecutions of ETOKA personnel and for use in WOOHP operations against ETOKA activities. Information from Operation Magic is in high demand by law enforcement agencies worldwide, but is restricted to WOOHP and DPA use only by order of Jerry, which has infuriated Patrick and the UN on one hand and and many national law enforcement agencies on the other, who all desire mutually beneficial information deals between themselves and WOOHP.

 _[...]_

Patrick is known both at WOOHP and at the UN for nursing high career ambitions and has a special talent for networking and making social and professional connections. He and Jerry are rumored to have an intensely hostile relationship, and there is speculation that Patrick, with the support of his allies in the DPA, will be the next in line to succeed Jerry as leader of WOOHP in the event of Jerry's retirement.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Operational File: Magic_

 **Mission Objectives:** _ Direct Action _X_ Information Gathering

 **Description:** Classified

 **Agents Assigned:** Classified

 **Spies Assigned:** Classified

 **Supervising Officer:** Alister, Patrick

 **Mission Status:** ACTIVE

 _[...]_

Supervising Officer Patrick Alister insists on the maximum degree of secrecy and security for all aspects of Operation Magic in order to protect the safety and the identity of the informer codenamed "Wizard" at the heart of the Syndicate. This is especially important in light of the recent series of failed WOOHP operations, which Alister blames, in part, on insecure practices fostered by Director Jerry Lewis' sloppy leadership.

 _[...]_

The information supplied by Wizard has been consistently received with great enthusiasm by officials at the UN, who are eagerly supporting Patrick Alister in hopes of expanding the scale of Operation Magic and increasing its success.

 _[...]_

An interdepartmental committee has been set up at the DPA to review and distribute the reports from Magic, known as the Alister Committee. Chaired by WOOHP Deputy Director Alister, the Committee's members do not include WOOHP Director Jerry Lewis.

 _[...]_

A secret WOOHP task force has been formed at the express order of the UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection to manage Operation Magic, receive and analyze Wizard's information, and provide support to Wizard in the field. Formed over Jerry's protests, the task force consists of specially-selected personnel from the WOOHP Operations, Investigations, and Agents Sections. The task force is placed under Patrick's direct command; Jerry has no authority over the task force and, by extension, little authority over Operation Magic.

 _[...]_

Magic's reputation has spread throughout the UN, and the national law enforcement agencies of the UN member-states are lining up to request access to Magic reports, even offering to share information of their own with WOOHP in return. However, Jerry's strict ban on the distribution of Magic reports outside of WOOHP and the DPA preclude any information-sharing deals at the present.

 _[...]_

Jerry is one of the very, very few who doubts Wizard's credibility and refuses to increase WOOHP funding of Operation Magic. This has made him many enemies at the UN and at WOOHP, who believe Jerry is motivated by his personal dislike of Patrick Alister and is jealous of Alister's success with Magic's subtle, gradual, indirect approach to crime fighting, as opposed to Jerry's preference for risky direct action operations with the Spies.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File:_ —, _Blaine_

 **Name:** Blaine —

 **Occupation:** Head of Operations, WOOHP

 **Age:** 24

 **Nationality:** American

 **Profile:**

Blaine — is the current Head of Operations at WOOHP. He is responsible for overseeing all WOOHP intelligence gathering activities and coordinating the operations of the various WOOHP branch offices. The second-youngest member of the WOOHP leadership, Blaine was promoted and removed from the field in [March of this year] after outstanding performance as a spy in the WOOHP Australia branch.

 _[...]_

Despite his rough start at WOOHP (refer to Suspect File: HUSK, Geraldine), Blaine quickly developed into an effective and loyal WOOHP spy during his posting in Australia, where he was responsible for, among many other things, the capture of crazed arms dealer Lockstock N. Barrel in Brisbane (refer to Operational File: Gun Nut Much?), the arrest of a ring of illegal animal smugglers led by Bob Trapper in Melbourne (refer to Operational File: Totally Exotic Pets!), and the exposure and arrest of a human trafficking operation affiliated with the ETOKA Syndicate based out of Darwin (refer to Operational File: Innocence Lost). His enthusiasm, courage, and intelligence, as well as his warm personality and ready sense of humor, make him immensely popular throughout WOOHP and ensure that he is well-suited for his current leadership role.

 _[...]_

Blaine, under the command of WOOHP Deputy Director Patrick Alister, is personally involved in Operation Magic and its associated task force, which, as an intelligence gathering mission, falls under his purview as Head of Operations. Due to the high degree of secrecy surrounding Magic, the exact details and extent of his involvement is unknown.

 _[...]_

[Approximately three years ago] Blaine was romantically involved with the current WOOHP Head of Spies, Clover (refer to Personal File: EWING, Clover Francise) for about four months. Their relationship ended [approximately one and a half years ago]. Presently, there is widespread WOOHP gossip that Blaine is in a romantic relationship with spy Samantha Simpson (refer to Personal File: SIMPSON, Samantha), though the veracity of this information is unknown.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File: BORING, Rick_

 **Name:** Rick Boring

 **Occupation:** Head of Investigations, WOOHP

 **Age:** 28

 **Nationality:** American

 **Profile:**

Rick Boring is the current Head of Investigations at WOOHP, making him a member of the organization's leadership. He joined WOOHP in 200— while still in high school, working as a spy in the WOOHP Kenyan branch. He enjoyed rapid promotion through the ranks and was appointed by Jerry to serve as Head of Investigations in 201—. His warm, jovial, and boisterous personality has made him many friends at WOOHP and he is frequently sought-after for lunch breaks, after-work drinks, and at WOOHP's infamous mandatory Christmas parties and picnics.

 _[...]_

As Head of Investigations, Rick is responsible for overseeing WOOHP investigations of persons suspected of criminal activity and building cases against criminals in WOOHP custody, as well as preparing briefings and reports for Jerry, the other WOOHP Section Heads, and WOOHP's superiors in the DPA and at the UN in general. He is also in charge of sharing information with and receiving information from the law enforcement agencies of the UN member-states. In addition, Rick is responsible for managing WOOHP internal security, integrity, and accountability - finding traitors, investigating corrupt agents and spies, and punishing agents and spies guilty of violating local and international laws.

 _[...]_

Rick and his analysts in the Investigations Section have access to all reports made by WOOHP spies, agents, and informers in the field, including the material supplied by Wizard as part of Operation Magic. Rick, under Patrick's command, is personally involved in the management of Magic and the WOOHP task force in charge of overseeing it, though the exact details and extent of his involvement is unknown.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File: EWING, Clover Francise_

 **Name:** Clover Francise Ewing

 **Occupation:** Head of Spies, WOOHP | Student, Malibu University (Senior - Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Design)

 **Age:** 20

 **Nationality:** American

 **Profile:**

Clover Ewing is the current Head of Spies at WOOHP. She is responsible for overseeing and, in many cases, personally executing the operations involving the Spy Section, also known as "the catsuit crowd" (note: nickname believed to have originated with Patrick Alister). Promoted to Head of Spies in [February of this year], Clover is the youngest member of the WOOHP leadership and the only one still regularly involved in fieldwork.

 _[...]_

Though not as quick-witted and sharp as her longtime teammate Samantha Simpson (refer to Personal File: SIMPSON, Samantha) nor as physically capable or athletic as her other teammate Alexandra — (refer to Personal File: —, Alexandra), Clover was, in Jerry's words, "the best of both worlds", "the balance between brains and brawn", and "the most able candidate to lead the spies". She remains the only WOOHP spy to have completed an assignment entirely on her own, without support from other spies or WOOHP (refer to Operational File: Matchmaker) and was a recipient of the WOOHP "Hundredth Villain Caught" and "Most WOOHP-tastic" awards. Her energy, bravery, and resourcefulness have earned her Jerry's confidence and make her exceptionally well-suited to her current role.

 _[...]_

[Approximately three years ago] Clover had a romantic relationship with the current Head of Operations, Blaine (refer to Personal File: —, Blaine). Though it ended [approximately one and a half years ago], Clover is said to retain no small degree of affection for Blaine and seems to regard him as her first true love. Rumors of Blaine's romantic involvement with her teammate Samantha Simpson have caused their friendship - one of the most famous in the organization - to cool somewhat.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File: EVILINE, Tomas_

 **Name:** Tomas Eviline (AKA Toomas Evilen)

 **Occupation:** Head of Agents, WOOHP

 **Age:** 39

 **Nationality:** Estonian

 **Profile:**

Tomas Eviline is the current Head of Agents at WOOHP. He is in charge of WOOHP's faceless throngs of black-suited, sunglasses-wearing agents, as well as WOOHP's fleet of ground and air vehicles and the elite WOOHP special forces teams. He joined WOOHP in 199— and served as a spy in the Baltic States branch, where he was appointed Head Manager of the branch before being promoted to Head of Agents in 200— by Jerry Lewis.

 _[...]_

During his tenure as a spy in the Baltic States branch, Eviline is reported to have engaged in activities in violation of Estonian and Latvian law and the WOOHP code of conduct while on a months-long undercover assignment with the Russian Mafiya in Tallinn (refer to Operational File: Cold Line). Though he was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing by an official WOOHP inquiry, he was immediately removed from fieldwork via his promotion to Head Manager. Despite his extensive field experience and numerous operational successes as Baltic States Head Manager, further promotion has come relatively slowly for Tomas, which is said to be a major complaint of his.

 _[...]_

Tomas Eviline's work as Head of Agents places him in frequent contact with Clover and Blaine, who need his agents to provide operational support, and Rick Boring, who often uses his agents to perform his internal security investigations. Thus, much of Tomas' job involves taking orders from his fellow Section Heads, something he is rumored to deeply resent.

 _[...]_

Eviline, under the command of Patrick Alister, is personally involved with Operation Magic and is a member of the task force charged with managing it, providing the agent support necessary to communicate with Wizard and protect his identity. Due to the degree of secrecy maintained around Magic, the exact details and extent of his involvement are unknown.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Accessing File . . . Access GRANTED_

 _Personal File: GOODLUCK, Oscar_

 **Name:** Oscar Goodluck

 **Occupation:** United Nations Liaison to WOOHP

 **Age:** 49

 **Nationality:** Senegalese

 **Profile:**

Oscar Goodluck is the liaison appointed by the UN Department for Political Affairs Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection to serve as intermediary between WOOHP and the DPA. Goodluck is responsible for relaying WOOHP requests for funding, more personnel, senior appointments, and other messages to the DPA, and for relaying policy directives from the UN to WOOHP. He has accesses to all WOOHP documents except for Operational Files for active and standby missions.

 _[...]_

 _File Closed_

 _Launching Application: Mission Manager_

 _Accessing Mission: Operation Impeachment_

 _Enter Security Code: ****_

 _Access GRANTED_

 **Operation Impeachment**

 **Mission Objectives:** _X_ Direct Action _X_ Information Gathering

 **Description:** N/A

 **Agents Assigned:** 0

 **Spies Assigned:** Simpson, Samantha

 **Supervising Officer:** Lewis, Jerry

 **Mission Status:** Standby

 _Summon Spy Simpson, Samantha?_

 _Summons Confirmed_

 _WOOHPing in Progress_

 _Arrival in 5...4...3...2...1_


	2. Prologue: Sam's Mission

_**Prologue: Sam's Mission**_

* * *

Afterwards, despite both a strong personal desire and standing orders to the contrary, Sam sometimes couldn't help remembering the worst day of her life.

The first time it happened had been all of two days since she moved into her cramped, one-bedroom apartment with its dismal view of the parking garage next door and not much else, and four days since Tomas Eviline had visited her in the containment center underneath WOOHP HQ with a large yellow envelope and news, both good and bad. Her wound had yet to fully heal then and the exertions of moving in must have made it worse, if the pain was anything to go by. It was shocking at first, since the pain had been absent, or at least manageable, for some time, enough for Sam to think that saving money by not buying painkillers was a good idea. Soon, though, it had become screamingly unbearable, and, not feeling up for a drive to the pharmacy at 9 PM with her right arm feeling like it would come off at the shoulder, she had been left with no choice but to resort to the bottle of whiskey given to her by the couple across the hall (apparently, the woman had a bartending license) as a housewarming gift.

The whiskey worked, though the experience convinced Sam (who, till then, had remained a strict and innocent teetotaler) that she should always keep a bottle of pain pills in the medicine drawer in the future - a lesson which would be forgotten amidst the hangover the next morning. It also had the unwanted, though not entirely unpleasant, effect of leading her thoughts astray, taking her back four months to that fateful November day she had been steadfastly striving to forget.

It hadn't been all that bad, which was the funny thing, until the end. At the time, it was the day before which had seemed like a bad day to Sam. Hazy recollections drifted back to her as she sprawled drunkenly on her sofa, which became steadily clearer as the night grew older and the whiskey infused her virgin mind with the stumbling, astonishing, one-time brilliance of the newly drunk.

 _There was...a test? Studying? And then - Jerry! WOOHPed, and then...something something, lots of talking, chit chat, Tinker Tailor. A lawyer - March! Jetpacks - umbrellas - lasers. Operation...something. A plane ticket - first class. Impeachment! It was Impeachment - that's what it was!_

 _I-I remember it. Everything._


	3. Prologue: Chapter One

_**Prologue: Sam's Mission**_

 _ **I**_

* * *

 _"WhoooAAAHHHH!"_

The air duct on the ceiling hissed open and a young woman tumbled out in a blur of wool, denim, and red, red hair. Before she broke her fall - and indeed, her neck - on the polished blue-gray metal of the floor, the floor tiles beneath her slid apart and a gilded Victorian sofa, tastefully upholstered in plush red velvet, sprang up to catch her.

She landed with a thump and a painful grunt, and spent a few moments lying on flat on her stomach trying to catch her breath. It had been such a long time since she had been in this familiar, austere office - months, even. Clover's fancy new promotion had come with her own fancy new office that, to everyone's delight, had its own WOOHPing setup, and Clover's first few days as Head of Spies had been spent with Sam and Alex, WOOHPing their fellow spies for the heck of it. They had only stopped after a pissed-off Dean, after his sixth pointless trip to Clover's office in as many days, had angrily told them to cut it out. Now that they - and everyone else, for that matter - reported to Clover, however, they saw less and less of Jerry, and gradually they had become accustomed to landing in Clover's office at inconvenient times rather than that of their former boss.

Their missions still tended to come at inconvenient times, though; that much had stayed the same. This one, in particular, was coming at an especially bad time for Sam, who had a history midterm in three days and was one hour in to a three-hour cram session - the first of two she had planned, to review half a semester's worth of lecture and discussion before the test. History classes, in general, are jokes and the courses at Mali-U were no exception, but Sam's professor was said to hate his students and delighted in making his classes the exceptions to the rule; with him, you never knew.

Hence, the studying - at least, until her desk drawer had opened up and devoured her whole, sucking her screaming into the labyrinthine network of WOOHPing tunnels that, as far as she knew, extended to every corner of the known universe.

"Alright, Jerry," Sam grumbled irately, as she sat up and tried to fix the unholy mess the WOOHPing had made of her hair, "long time no WOOHP, good to see you too, now would you mind telling me what -"

The words died in her mouth as she noticed, for the first time, the state of the room around her. Everywhere, _everywhere_ , were multicolored manila folders stamped with the WOOHP emblem - a titanic W superimposed on an elliptical globe - piled into haphazard stacks ranging in height from a few inches off the floor to even taller than Sam, even when standing. Jerry's office was absolutely covered with them, and judging from how swollen with papers they were Sam estimated there were enough of them to constitute a small forest, which briefly enraged the environmental crusader inside of her. Squinting, she saw that some of them had been there so long they were gathering dust.

 _So the rumors - they're true. Jerry's really gone wacko._

She didn't need to look to know what these folders were. After two months, which was when Jerry first began locking himself away in his office and when files had first started disappearing from the WOOHP archives, nearly everyone at WOOHP HQ and even several people at the branch offices knew. They were Personal Files, Operational Files, Organization Files, Suspect Files - a pantheon of WOOHP's heroes, a _tour de force_ of its victories, and a veritable rogues gallery of its vanquished and still at-large bad guys, as well as, curiously, a depressing litany of its most recent failures. The archival workers had started the rumors - _It's almost time for Jerry to retire, and he's reviewing the achievements of a long and successful career in the name of Human Protection._ From there the rumors had taken a decidedly negative turn, and evolved, the way rumors do, into something far uglier - _We are humoring a vain old man who's lost his touch, clinging on to old glories before he's sacked at the dismal end of his career._

At first, Sam had paid no mind to the gossip, but as entire shelves in the archives began to vanish overnight and Jerry went days, then weeks, without being seen outside his office, even she had begun to worry that the rumor mill was right, that her longtime boss and friend, demoralized by the failures of the present, had sought escape by retreating into the fantasy of a bygone WOOHP golden age.

"Jerry, what am I...what have you - ," she began, looking at the desk at the head of the room - also covered in files - and at the man sitting in the chair behind it, currently rotated away from her view.

"I apologize for interrupting your history studies, Sam, but I was wondering if you might help me with my own first." The chair spun around and for the second time in as many minutes Sam's words caught and withered away in her throat, as her hand flew up to her mouth of its own accord, stifling the gasp before it escaped.

Jerry raised an eyebrow at that. "I realize the volume of documents may seem a little overwhelming, Sam, but surely you've faced more horrific things as a spy." He tried to offer a defiant, rakish smile, but it came out looking more skeletal than reassuring.

 _My gosh,_ Sam thought. The man before her was barely recognizable as the Jerry she once knew. His eyes, once sharp and alert, had sunk deep into increasingly-hollow sockets, and deep bags had formed beneath them. His skin, already pale to begin with, had turned almost as white as paper and looked like it was stretched tight on his body, reinforcing the skeletal visage. And though he had always been rather lean, he looked almost emaciated now - his clothes hung loosely on his deprived frame. Only his voice, calm, cool, and full of stoic British confidence, remained as she remembered.

 _The forest of files. The signs of insane overwork. What have you been doing here, all alone, for the last two months, Jerry?_

She must have been staring in horror for quite some time, because the next thing she knew Jerry was coughing embarrassedly and muttering something about it not mattering and things changing soon. That snapped her out of her trance.

"What's going to change?! No, wait - what's going on, Jerry?! You hide out here for two months with half of the WOOHP Archives and you look like you haven't slept in three weeks and everyone's talking about how your time's running out and -"

"Sam," he said, neatly breaking her rant, "I need you to promise me something. Everything we talk about today has to remain absolutely secret. Trust no one, Sam. Especially not in the mainstream. Not even Clover or Blaine, or Alex."

The mention of the first two names made Sam wince involuntarily, and a brief flash of guilt - and pained affection - shot through her before dissipating. "Why not? What's going on?"

A long, tired sigh escaped from Jerry's mouth, and hearing how frail and vulnerable he sounded almost moved her to tears. _"Promise me_ , Sam," he said, with a desperate urgency in his voice that she had never heard before, in all her seven years of knowing him. "What I tell you - it must remain secret, Sam, it _must_."

 _You're crazy! You've lost it! Tell me what's happening!_ She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but the sight of Jerry's baggy, dying eyes, and the frightening pleading tone in his voice, moved her to pity, and she said, softly, "I promise."

He visibly brightened at that, and leaned back in his seat. "Thank you, Sam. I know that this must be very confusing to you, and that you must have a lot of questions, but you'll understand soon. What I'm about to tell you is not above board. No one else knows. Nor can they, until I personally give you the all-clear. Do you understand?"

At her lying nod, he went on, "They're after my head, Sam. Do you understand? Patrick and his friends, both at WOOHP and at the UN, they want me gone. But what I have in mind will change everything for WOOHP - it's for us, Sam." A note of manic intensity had crept into his voice, scaring her ever so slightly. "It's for WOOHP. Remember that."

"Uh, you still haven't told me what 'it' is," Sam said, growing more uncomfortable by the second.

Jerry plowed on like she hadn't spoken. "You remember that time you went undercover to spy on Jazz Hands? Miss Spirit Fingers? I need you to do that again - to go undercover, I mean." He pulled an envelope from a desk drawer and held it out to Sam.

Stepping gingerly through the maze of folders between the sofa and Jerry's desk, Sam snatched the envelope and opened it, finding a Canadian passport, four plane tickets, and a wad of money from some foreign country inside. Opening the passport, she was greeted by her own face staring back at her, but with the name of Rebecca Turner, not Samantha Simpson.

"You'll notice that's not actually your name - there's a reason for that, you'll see later," Jerry said, preempting her questions. He frowned, the furrowing of his brow looking like the crumpling of paper. "I had to do some...unethical and illegal things to get that fake passport, so please don't lose it or WOOHP might be held accountable. As for the rest of the envelope, you'll find one ticket to Bangkok, Air Thailand, first class, departing from Los Angeles International in five hours, as well as three tickets returning from Bangkok to LA departing in two days, and 180,000 Thai Baht, or just over 5,000 American dollars, which you will use for any expenses you may encounter on your mission."

Sam stared blankly at the papers in her hand. The picture in the passport was a good one - she'd just had her eyebrows done the previous day, she remembered - and the prospect of a first class flight to anywhere had been the best news she had all day, but for some reason she couldn't fathom she felt that things were about to get a whole lot worse. "And what is my mission, exactly?"

At once, the room seemed to still. Jerry looked at her for an awfully and awkwardly long time, and Sam was considering asking again - or making a dash for the door - when at last he spoke.

"I want you to go to Bangkok," he said, in an intense, conspiratorially-hushed tone, entirely at odds with the blunt, straightforward briefings she was used to. "I've had an offer of service. A lawyer for a tax firm that fronts for the ETOKA Syndicate wants to enter our Witness Protection program, and I need someone to take him into protective custody. He and his wife have fled Syndicate surveillance and are heading for Bangkok. Your mission - Operation Impeachment - will be to find them and bring them back to WOOHP Headquarters before the Syndicate tracks them down."

Sam frowned. "Why not tell the WOOHP Thailand branch to bring them in? Why send me?"

Jerry shook his head. "Operation Impeachment is too important, the stakes involved are too high, to give it to the Thailand branch, or even let them know it's happening. I need absolute secrecy, and I need to send someone I trust completely."

Sam's frown deepened. From what she had heard so far, this mission sounded like a piece of cake, almost like a vacation, even: fly to Bangkok on first class airfare, meet some sleazy lawyer and his wife, and fly them back to WOOHP - _so that's what the extra tickets are for!_ Normally, her missions involved trying to stop some crazed demented supervillain - or, more often than not, a bitter wacko with a grudge - from taking over the world, not some secretive meet-and-greet games. She couldn't understand why Jerry seemed so worked up about this one when it seemed like the easiest assignment she had received in...well, forever. "What's the big deal, Jerry? What's so important about this lawyer?"

Jerry held out a thick red folder. Sam took it and flipped it open, and a man with a broad, meaty, brawler's face - not at all the weaselly, punchable sneer she had expected - smiled out at her. _MARCH, Franz. Swiss - well, where there's banks, there's lawyers. A WOOHP informer since...the beginning of October? That's a month and a half ago!_

"Franz March has given me some top-notch information over the past month and a half. He's proven his value, and is a reliable informer. The information he's given me - tax documents, mostly - shut down Syndicate money laundering and financial fraud operations in Hong Kong, the United States, Denmark, and Kenya after I passed them on to the local authorities. I've checked out and confirmed his life story, and even interviewed him once on a video call. I trust him, Sam, but the Syndicate has detected the leak, and now they're onto him. WOOHP needs to get him out before the Syndicate catches up to him."

 _Approached WOOHP Director Jerry Lewis personally to offer services as an informer...swore revenge on the Syndicate after his mistress (also a tax lawyer at his firm; refer to Suspect File...) fell from a 22nd-story window in Ankara after leaking incriminating financial records to Turkish authorities. Official police reports declared it a suicide, but ETOKA involvement is suspected._ Sitting down on Jerry's desk, she continued flipping through the file, eventually encountering a wad of papers marked up heavily in green and red highlighter ink. "What's this?"

"A chart I made, to track Franz's work over the course of his career. Green is general tax work done for routine ETOKA illegal activities, and red is...well, actually, red is the reason I need Franz so badly. He has information that I need, Sam."

"What information?" Sam asked distractedly, still flipping through the file. "More tax records?" _Hard to imagine how anything that boring could be used to fight bad guys!_

She looked up to see Jerry's eyes, formerly faded and lifeless, now twinkling with a thrilled, electric joy. "Not tax records," he said, smiling a smile that made him seem ten years younger. "Treasure."

He leaned forward over his desk, and before Sam's eyes the walking almost-corpse who had summoned her seemed to morph into the old, familiar Jerry she knew and loved. With a fatherly, almost giddy furtiveness, he whispered, "He has the name of the spy the Syndicate has planted in the World Organization of Human Protection - right at the top of WOOHP."


	4. Prologue: Chapter Two

**Author's Note** : This will be my last update for a while, now that my vacation is about to end. From now on, new chapters will be written and posted when I feel like it. I won't forget this work, but do not be surprised at dry spells lasting multiple months.

My thanks to those who have left kind reviews. As always, constructive criticism and suggestions are welcome.

* * *

 _ **Prologue: Sam's Mission**_

 _ **II**_

* * *

"There's a rotten apple, Sam. We have to find it, before it poisons the whole bunch."

For the second time, the world seemed to stand still. For a full thirty seconds Sam stared at Jerry in mute, uncomprehending shock, her eyes as wide as saucers, unable to move or even think. All she could do was feel the pressure of Jerry's unwavering, iron gaze, filled with a fanatical, triumphant certainty, bore into her own eyes, and hear the slow, dirgelike thumping of her heart in her chest.

"A-A _spy_?" She asked at last, only then becoming aware that her mouth was hanging open. "One of us? A spy for t-the _bad guys_? For _the Syndicate_?" _It can't be!_ She wanted to scream, but try as she might she found she hadn't the strength to - and even if she had, there wasn't enough air in the gaping void that had abruptly filled her chest to fuel it.

Jerry nodded solemnly. "One of the top five." He pressed a button on his desk, and behind him the massive TV screen that took up almost the entire wall flickered to life, displaying the portraits of five people, all of whom were familiar to Sam, although some were more familiar than others.

"Patrick Alister, my Deputy Director and treacherous, despicable second-in-command. Rick Boring, our Head of Investigations. Tomas Eviline, our Head of Agents. And you know Clover and Blaine."

Involuntarily, Sam winced as she heard the last two names. There was no sharp pang of remorse this time, though, only a silent, invincible shock and a dim awareness of the faces onscreen. She did know Clover and Blaine, of course, from her spy work, and she had infrequent run-ins with the three older men every now and then at WOOHP HQ, having first met them at one of Jerry's totally lame and hatefully mandatory WOOHP parties in her senior year of high school. Patrick, she remembered, had been - and still was, as far as she could tell - arrogant and dismissive, and had spoken to her in a patronizing, condescending manner, like a parent humoring a spoiled child. If he hadn't towered over her by a foot and suffocated her with smoke from his chimney of a pipe, she might've thrown her punch in his long, wrinkly face instead of fleeing with a case of smoke inhalation. Tomas Eviline had been an absolute creep - Evil Tomas, they'd called him, and the name stuck to this day. Clover had vented to Sam for sixteen minutes straight about how he'd spent an entire conversation with her staring at her chest and asking repeatedly, in his awkward, stiff, Estonian-style English, whether she was single. Only Rick Boring, ironically, had been any fun. He had told hilariously obscene jokes that made Sam turn beet red, sang karaoke with Clover in his boisterous barroom baritone, and, despite his beefy frame, cut a surprisingly good figure on the dance floor, according to Alex, who danced with him no fewer than five times that night.

As for Clover and Blaine, her (former? She wasn't quite sure how things stood between them) friend and boyfriend, respectively, all she could think of as she gazed as their portraits was how Clover's blazer - red like her catsuit - brought out her serene blue eyes, and how...how _sharp_ Blaine looked in a suit.

"How do you know it's one of them?" Her voice sounded numb and dull even to her own ears. _This is...this is insane! It has to be! A rotten apple? Any of them, one of our top people - a traitor?_

Jerry sighed. "After Operation Horoscope - that bloody mess in Peru in June - I began to suspect that someone was compromising WOOHP operations from the inside. For the past two months, I've been going through old files, our operational history and our personnel records, looking and the failures and the aborted missions, doing my own investigations to see why they failed and who was involved. I've worked backwards, compared, contrasted, referenced and cross-referenced, and now I'm nearly there. I've narrowed the range of suspects to these five - all Section Heads or above, all with the necessary access to operations and information, all with the experience to pull something like this and get away with it." He turned to face the screen. "I've known Tomas and Rick even longer than I've known you. I despise Patrick, but even I don't want to accuse him without being certain. I love Clover like a daughter, and Blaine like a favorite nephew, but I can't discount the possibility that it could be them." Sorrowfully, he continued, "I don't want to believe it either, Sam. But all the evidence points to one of them, and I can't ignore that."

Pushing a few files out of the way, he grabbed a teapot sitting precariously on a corner of his desk, as well as two cups. "Tea, Sam? Darjeeling? You look like you could use a cup right now."

"N-no thanks." Slowly, Sam looked down at the file in her hands. "How does Franz March know who the spy is?"

 _He's been cooped up in here for two months...Jerry must be totally nuts, he must be, what he's saying can't be true..._

Pouring himself a cup, Jerry took a sip of his Darjeeling and set the cup back down before he answered. "As a part of his work for ETOKA, Franz was given a top-secret job - to set up the spy's private Swiss bank account. Now I don't know whether money is the spy's motivation for betraying WOOHP, but I imagine that even if it isn't, betrayal is hard work and deserves the odd million every now and then. Anyway, the thing is, even anonymous bank accounts need the client's personal details for the bank's own use - it's part of Swiss banking law. So Franz was given the spy's personal information and used it to open an account with a bank in Bern that the Syndicate is known to use. You remember the documents with the red and green marker ink? Red ink denotes the tax work he handled for transactions for the spy's private account."

At her dim nod, he went on, "So you see, Sam, this is why everything I've told you about your mission so far, no matter how strange it may sound, has to be that way. You must keep this a secret because if anyone else hears, the suspects might too - you know how quickly rumors spread - and they might escape or alert the Syndicate. You must travel by a false passport because it is likely the spy has leaked the names of all WOOHP agents and spies to the Syndicate, so that if you travel under your real identity, they'll see you coming. I can't inform the WOOHP Thailand branch of the mission because Blaine controls them as Head of Operations, and Blaine is a suspect. I can't ask the Investigations Section to conduct an internal security investigation because they report to Rick, and he too is a suspect. I can't send Alex - or indeed, any other spies - to assist you, otherwise Clover will notice that she has too many spies unaccounted for and that might alert her. And you must travel by commercial flight because Tomas controls all WOOHP vehicles as Head of Agents and he's a suspect as well, and anyways WOOHP flights must be cleared with local air traffic control and I don't want to tell the Thai authorities, in case a corrupt official or another Syndicate spy tips off ETOKA." He frowned. "I don't think I've told you this, but the Thai government knows nothing of Operation Impeachment, which makes it entirely illegal - WOOHP is supposed to operate with the knowledge and consent of local authorities, but I can't take the risk of informing them. The stakes and the dangers involved are just too high."

Jerry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "This is why...this is why, Sam, if something goes wrong and you're caught, either by the Thai police or the Syndicate, you can't mention me, and why you can't communicate with me while you're on mission. I need...there has to be _deniability,_ Sam," he said delicately, as if saying the word the wrong way would jeopardize the mission. "Do you understand? The way things are now, after all our recent failures...if you're caught and the Thais and the UN ask me what I was doing, I don't think WOOHP would survive the official consequences if I told them the truth, that I ordered it. If you're caught, Sam, I need you to lie. Tell them it was your idea, that it was all your doing, your own private mission." He looked at Sam sadly. "I feel awful about this, truly. I don't want to throw you under the bus, but it's for the highest cause."

 _Wow. Just one bombshell after another. This day just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?_

"It's for WOOHP," she said blandly, after a long pause. _Remember that_ , Jerry told her.

He smiled in relief. "That's right. Thank you, Sam. I knew you'd understand."

 _It's not like anyone will believe me anyway. "I just felt like flying to Thailand three days before my history midterm on a fake Canadian passport to rescue a WOOHP informer from evil international gangsters" - who's going to believe_ that _?_

Taking another sip of tea, Jerry cleared his throat before saying, "Back to the mission, now. Franz and his wife, Marjorie, will be staying at the Twilight Majestical Resort on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, just north of Bangkok." He pressed a button, and the images on the screen changed from the suspects' portraits to that of a beautiful hotel, decorated in gold, red and white, built in a classical Asian style, sitting amidst lush gardens next to a grand river, whose waters reflected the gold of the setting sun. "It's a lovely place, with five stars on TripAdvisor and its own uniformed security team - small wonder why Franz chose to hide there. Get there as soon as you exit the terminal, Sam. Marjorie will be expecting you in the lobby, at a cafe next to reception." He pressed another button, and the portrait of a blonde woman in early middle age appeared onscreen, sporting shoulder-length frizzy blonde hair that, Sam thought, would look better straight. "That's her. Look for her at the cafe. And check her table - if she has a drink on the table, it's safe to meet. If there's no drink or she's not there, you'll have to make sure the area is secure from any Syndicate thugs before she will agree to meet."

"Marjorie. Drink. Ok. Got it." Sam took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a minute, hoping that it would quell the butterflies that were, for all practical intents and purposes, throwing a rave in her stomach. It didn't work.

 _This is crazy this is crazy this is crazy this is a bad BAD idea,_ she thought, but for some reason she hadn't the heart to say it straight to Jerry's face. Every time she thought she might try to, the look of haggard exhaustion and desperate confidence on Jerry's face plucked a hidden chord inside of her, and her objections - persistent as they were - withered away and crumbled into a thousand pieces.

"Once you meet with Marjorie, she'll inform Franz of your arrival and he'll come down from his room. When he does, you _must_ ask at once for the name of the spy. He will tell you right away, and when he does, you _must_ tell me immediately." A sly, mischievous look crept into his eyes. "We'll need codenames, Sam, for the suspects. If you tell me the spy's real name, the spy might be alerted in the event - in the highly likely event, unfortunately - that the spy has compromised WOOHP's secure communications. If that happens, it is entirely possible that the spy may escape before I can order his or her arrest." He smiled, a little cheekily. "Are you familiar with the nursery rhyme 'Tinker, Tailor?'"

"Um...no?" And suddenly, all at once, Sam was seized by the urge to scream aloud at how ridiculous the whole mission seemed and how...how... _bad_ and unthinkable Jerry's premise seemed. _Nursery rhymes? Codenames? Nursery rhymes_ as _codenames? What is this, a bad spy movie?_

Jerry looked unperturbed, oblivious to the turmoil inside her mind. "No, of course you wouldn't know it. You aren't British. Well, it goes, 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief.'"

"That doesn't even rhyme that much," Sam said, skepticism written on her face. Inwardly, though, she was secretly pleased with herself for having finally found the courage to raise an objection, as small as it was.

"Never mind that," Jerry said irately. "Repeat it, if you can."

To her surprise, Sam was able to, despite having heard it for the first time only moments before.

Jerry smirked. "The point is not that it rhymes perfectly, but that it rhymes well enough to be easy to remember. Which is why the words from the rhyme will work well for our codenames. We'll assign the codename of 'Tinker' to..."

Five minutes of assigning and reviewing codenames later, Sam was now totally convinced Jerry had gone cuckoo. _This is...the lamest, weirdest, most...bad, bad mission ever!_

Sam let out a long, long sigh. "Whew. Wow. Ok. Um...really, _really_ not feeling any better about this, Jer."

Jerry nodded sympathetically, an indulgent bob of the head, while opening a desk drawer and rummaging about inside. "I realize this can be a lot to process at once, Sam, and I know you haven't the benefit of my own investigations or my interactions with Franz March. But I hope that you trust me, and in any event you'll have a twelve-hour air trip to think it through. In the meantime, I have a few things that I think will cheer you up."

He began laying the contents of the drawer on the desk for Sam to see. "And now for your gadgets. For this mission, you'll be having a practical loadout, things to help you spot and get out of trouble. You'll be using the Laser Lipstick, the All-Weather Umbrella, the Jetpack Backpack, the Lipbalm Smokebomb, the M-Ray Contact Lenses, and the Ultra-Sensitive Earring Microphone."

Despite her misgivings, Sam couldn't help but grin as she ran her fingers over the shiny new - yet reliably familiar - gadgets she'd been issued. They had all gotten her out of sticky situations before, and knowing that she'd have them on hand for this mission made her feel like she could handle whatever came her way. "You're right. I do feel better." She smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Jerry."

"Glad to know it." Jerry stood up now, a laborious, ponderous movement that seemed absurd for such a slender man, and began making his way around the desk. He knocked over a few files, but didn't seem to notice or care. "All I need, Sam, is one codename. Whatever happens, if the Syndicate finds him and shoots him as he comes down the stairs, or if they chase you into Bangkok, whatever happens, you _must_ get me that codename. Call me on your compowder, write it in your blood on the front door of the Thailand branch, yell it down the telephone into the Head Manager's ear - do whatever you have to do, Sam. Just let me know."

"Well, you know, if I do run into trouble, I think I can take care of myself," Sam muttered through clenched teeth, as she struggled to stuff the All-Weather Umbrella into the backpack portion of the Jetpack Backpack. "Aha! Got it!"

Slinging the backpack over her shoulders, she set Franz's file back on Jerry's desk next to the teapot and stuffed the envelope with Rebecca Turner's passport, the plane tickets, and her Thai money into her pocket. She looked up to see Jerry standing before her, looking at her with a pitiful, hopeful flicker in his eyes.

"Bring the Marches back. Get that codename. Come home safe." He set his hand on her shoulder, squeezed gently, and smiled, and for the first time since she arrived Sam felt the tension in her nerves loosen, ever so slightly, and a warm surge of affection in her breast.

"I-I will, Jerry. I won't let WOOHP down." She wished she could know that for certain.

If Jerry could sense her doubts, both about the mission and his theory, he gave no indication. "Good luck, Sam." He took a step back and reached for a button on his desk, and Sam braced herself for what was about to happen. "Ta-ta."

As the floor opened up and swallowed her whole - and a few stacks of files, for good measure - Sam closed her eyes and wished for the best, hoping with the desperate, irrational optimism of the unknowingly damned that Jerry wasn't crazy, that his rotten apple theory wasn't real, and that, against all odds and all logic, everything would turn out all right.

* * *

 **Operation Impeachment**

 **Mission Status:** ACTIVE

 _Spy Samantha Simpson Deployed_


	5. Prologue: Chapter Three

**Author's Note:** This chapter will be somewhat longer than the previous ones. Please let me know if you prefer shorter chapters, longer chapters, or chapters of about this length.

Also I happen to think that this chapter is more shoddily-written than the others. Please let me know if you have issues with the pacing, the descriptions, imagery, etc.

 **Content Warning:** Blood, implied death, and adult language.

* * *

 _ **Prologue: Sam's Mission**_

 _ **III**_

* * *

" _We're sorry. Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice message system. At the-"  
_

Sam hung up and sighed heavily, setting the payphone back in the receiver. She was out ten dollars now and none of her calls had been picked up, which was utterly unexpected of the people she'd been calling, who were normally so quick to answer her, especially when she had something she wanted to get off her chest. It was as if they had a sixth sense for when something was troubling her thoughts. But not today.

"They're not answering my calls," she murmured softly to herself. "There's a traitor in WOOHP. I'm way behind in studying for my history midterm. Can this day get any worse?" She winced. "No no no! Don't ask that. Never ask that question."

She sighed again and trudged back to the gate before plopping herself down in an empty seat and staring at the clock on the wall across from her. The flight had been delayed - _what else is new_? - and for the past twenty minutes she had been loafing about with nothing much to do. She had tried to study for her midterm, going over course readings on her compowder (having left her phone on her desk when she'd been WOOHPed) but trying to read the tiny letters on the screen had given her migraines and honestly, she wasn't in the mood for studying anyway. The same went for reading that novel she'd bought from the bookstore, or watching the late-night news on the TV screen hanging from the ceiling. Every time she tried to focus on something that didn't threaten to give her an anxiety attack, she could concentrate for only a few heartbeats before the memory of her briefing with Jerry gnawed its way back into her mind.

It wasn't that crazy, Jerry's theory, now that she thought about it - Sam wasn't sure that made her feel better or worse. WOOHP had seen plenty of traitors before: Tim Scam, Myrna Beesbottom, Boogie Gus, Terrence, and a number of other current residents of the WOOHP prisons and containment centers came to mind, and if she was honest with herself she'd sort of been wondering when the next one would pop up. So no - it wasn't the idea that there was a traitor that scared her. She'd dealt with that kind of thing before.

 _What is it, then?_

It was several things, she eventually decided, after a few minutes of intense pondering. The fact that this traitor was one of the highest-ranking officials at WOOHP, and was in a place to put thousands of lives and the entire organization in danger. The fact that this traitor spied for ETOKA, who were beyond a doubt the most despicable and disgusting enemies she and WOOHP had ever faced, who had already killed - _k_ _illed! murdered!_ \- dozens of WOOHP agents and spies and, infuriatingly, escaped justice time and time again, managing to be one step ahead of WOOHP raids and investigators with an almost magical, and certainly hopelessly enraging, regularity.

It was also the fact that this traitor was a familiar, or at least recognizable, face, someone she had met and spoken with and knew personally, to say nothing of the fact that it could be her new boyfriend or one of her best friends -

Sam winced again, the idea itself proving physically harmful to her, sending a brief stab of pain through her heart. There was already enough drama in her life surrounding her dating Clover's ex, and having both of them mixed up in Jerry's rotten apple insanity was way more than she could handle.

 _Besides_ , she thought, after a few more minutes of reflection, _it couldn't really be one of them._ She knew them too well. Both were fun-loving, free-spirited, warm, kind, compassionate, sweet, loyal...the list of virtues went on and on. They were good people, and they had proven that by being her friends and loving her, in a platonic and, in Blaine's case, a romantic sense. Perhaps Jerry had forgotten that, cooped up in his office for two months, but Sam hadn't. It wasn't in their natures to betray - although Clover might, if pressed, say it was in Sam's.

 _Enough!_ Sam pushed that unpleasant thought out of her head. _We can safely cross Clover and Blaine off the list. The_ _only real_ _suspects_ _are Patrick, Rick, and Tomas. Codenames -  
_

"Attention Gate Seven, Air Thailand flight to Bangkok will now begin boarding. We apologize for the delay. All first-class and business class passengers, please begin assembling and have your boarding passes ready. Thank you."

Abruptly, her musings ceased, and Sam shot up from her seat and onto her feet. Turning her eyes to the ticket counter, where a small line of well-dressed, prosperous men and women had gathered, she was suddenly seized by an urge to panic, to run out the terminal, all the way back to her dorm at Mali-U, and bury herself under her blankets and not come out for days. But just as suddenly, with a mature, adamant resolve she didn't know she had, the rational part of her clamped down firmly on the last, desperate assault of her fears and uneasiness and banished them, with finality, to the dark corners of her mind. She took a deep breath.

 _Screw it. Whatever happens, whoever it is, it doesn't matter. It's my job to go. My duty. It's for WOOHP. Remember that._

* * *

The first thing that Sam noticed about Bangkok was the _heat_.

Even in November, Bangkok temperatures were uncomfortable to people used to cooler, drier places, hovering somewhere around 75 degrees with decent chances of rain. The resulting atmospheric conditions created a vicious heat with a cloying, dense humidity which clung to Sam's skin and, in conjunction with the sweat generated by the tropical clime, plastered Sam's skin to her jeans and sweater. It was an unsavory and supremely disgusting sensation, and within a few minutes of emerging into the open air Sam found herself beating a hasty retreat back into the air-conditioned terminal, desperately looking for a restroom where she could change into something more appropriate for the weather with the help of her trusty compowder.

As she raced back into the terminal and then, after a few minutes, out again, there was no reason at all for her to notice a man in a light gray suit leaning over a balcony on the second floor of the terminal that gave him a clear view of the exits and the pick-up/drop-off bay outside, as his eyes followed her driven, energetic steps across the floor and his fingers softly tapped out a text message on his cell phone, which he sent to its recipient as soon as he saw the taxi she had entered pull away from the curb.

* * *

The taxi driver mumbled his thanks in Thai as he greedily counted the thick wad of bills he had been given. With an obvious reluctance, he fished in his pocket and pulled out a few bills of different colors and smaller denominations and made change for the trip.

"Thanks," Sam said, stuffing the dirty, crumpled notes into the envelope with the rest of her money and the remaining plane tickets. She popped the door open and stepped outside, the heat no longer unbearable now that she'd changed into khaki shorts and a loose floral shirt. Taking a few moments to stretch and relieve her aching joints and muscles after the two-hour-long ride from the airport, she also took the opportunity to survey her surroundings.

The taxi driver had dropped her down at the foot of a grand series of marble stairs decorated with its own red carpet down the center, a gilded colonnade, and, at the top, two golden elephant statues on either side before it led into the hotel proper. Next to the stairs, in the lush verdant gardens, she could see hotel guests dressed in flattering and, in a few unfortunate cases, unflattering tropical outfits strolling leisurely, sitting and drinking at lawn tables, or sunning themselves on pool chairs as hotel staff, dressed smartly in white shirts and red vests (and, amazingly, not sweating at all despite their impractical outfits) darted back and forth with trays of drinks and elegant little bowls of cool treats. Behind her a collection of rowboats and speedboats sat moored to a wooden pier that jutted out into the river, whose waters nearly blinded her with their brilliant reflection of the setting sun.

"Wow," she thought aloud. "Jerry was right. This _is_ a pretty fancy place."

She started up the stairs and quickly became aware of the eyes tracking her as she went. It was nothing out of the ordinary - she _was_ a pretty girl, there was no question of that, she knew - but it made her uncomfortable nonetheless. Thankfully, the stares didn't last too long, as far as she could tell - just a brief flicker of eyes in her direction before flickering away almost as quickly.

 _Well, creeps will be creeps, dirty men will be dirty men, dirty women will be - hey, wait a minute._ It wasn't every day that women checked her out, and Sam could swear that some of the female guests and staff had been looking at her as well.

 _Huh. Guess I really do just look_ that _good._ She fought the urge to laugh. She was starting to sound like Clover now.

She made it to the top of the stairs and followed the red carpet all the way to the front door of the hotel, where the bellboy and two stern-looking security guards bowed stiffly before holding the doors open for her. The guards, she saw, were armed - heavy-looking black batons were clipped to their belts, as were holsters containing sleek handguns. In spite of herself, Sam gulped. Evidently, the Twilight Majestical took the safety of its guests a lot more seriously than normal hotels.

 _On the plus side_ , _any Syndicate goons looking for Franz and Marjorie are going to have their work cut out for them_.

Stepping inside, she walked past two more security guards before surveying the lobby. A large, square-shaped reception counter sat in front of the door like an island, manned by a team of pretty young women standing behind it, currently busying themselves with attending to a rather long line of around thirty tourists in business and casual attire. Behind reception, a bit to the right, was a stairway that led to the elevators and the second floor balcony, sparsely occupied by a few wandering staff and guests. Directly behind reception was a lounge - black leather chairs, lacquered wooden tables, ashtrays, and a few men and women chatting with each other behind cups of tea and coffee.

And to the left of reception was the cafe Jerry had told her about, populated by a few men and women, mostly sitting alone except for two men at one table. And _her_ \- Marjorie March, nonchalantly looking at her cell phone, while a large plastic cup of what Sam recognized as a green tea smoothie sat on the table in front of her.

 _Drink means it's safe to meet_. Sam felt a sense of relief inside of her. _So far, so good. Guess I won't need the Earring Mic or the Contact Lenses after all._

She walked over to Marjorie's table, almost colliding with a staff member mopping the floor on the way, and sat across from her. As Marjorie looked up, however, Sam was struck by a sudden loss for words. Should she introduce herself? Demand to see her husband? If she should introduce herself, should it be as Samantha Simpson or Rebecca Turner? Not once in the twenty hours or so since she left WOOHP, she realized, did she think about this moment.

 _Well, this is awkward._ The people she met on missions were usually either villains trying to take over the world or pull off some other loony scheme, or normal people fleeing from or being kept prisoner by the same. Marjorie March, with her cool green eyes and the calm, controlled vibe she gave off ( _and_ , Sam couldn't help but think, _her unstylish frizzy hair_ ), didn't resemble either of those. To Sam, she seemed like a woman who wouldn't be fazed by anything, not even ETOKA assassins out for her and her husband's heads.

Marjorie broke the silence first. "Are you the spy from WOOHP?" She asked in a low tone.

The sound of her voice snapped Sam out of her paralysis. "Yes," she answered confidently. "I'm from WOOHP. I'm here to help you and Franz get out of Thailand and to WOOHP Headquarters in Los Angeles." She didn't ask for Sam's name, and considering how she was supposed to be undercover Sam judged it right not to tell her.

Marjorie smiled. "Great! It's so nice to meet you!" She reached out and shook Sam's hand, and once more Sam couldn't help but notice how ordinary Marjorie was for such an extraordinary situation, how she seemed okay with everything that was happening. "Marjorie March. But you probably already knew that. I took the liberty of ordering some cakes for us - the hotel's tiramisu is quite good, I think. We can eat while we wait for Franz to come down."

Sam blinked. Cakes weren't what she was expecting. Neither was she expecting a waiter to appear next to them almost immediately after Marjorie finished speaking. Wordlessly, he set two plates of delicious-looking brown cake on the table. Sam noticed how his hand shook from what she thought was a rather bad case of anxiety, rattling the metal forks on the plates, and she watched, as he turned to leave, a bead of sweat drip off his face and land next to Marjorie's drink.

She frowned. _What's up with him? What's he nervous about?_

Marjorie looked at the drop of sweat with a raised eyebrow. "Nice service," she said, grinning as she wiped it away with a napkin.

Sam stared at her cake for a few moments. It looked quite tasty - and, judging by Marjorie's contented chewing, it was - but for some reason she couldn't find an appetite. All she wanted was for this to be done with as soon as possible, to get the spy's name, call Jerry, and then _run_ , with the Marches in tow, back to Bangkok, and then back to LA, hopefully in time for her midterm and ahead of any Syndicate henchmen chasing after them. She would deal with the shock of learning who the spy was on the plane, she decided.

 _The spy_. It was almost time, she realized. She would soon know.

 _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Poor Man, Beggar Man. One of the top five. A rotten apple._

"How long will it take for your husband to come down?" She asked, trying to sound casual and unconcerned. The butterflies were starting up in her stomach again, and she hoped it didn't show on her face or in her voice.

Marjorie smiled again. She did that an awful lot, Sam realized. "I'll send him a text now," she said, starting to tap on her phone.

Sam felt like reaching across the table and shaking Marjorie silly. _Look, lady, I don't think you understand just what's at stake here, alright?!_ She wanted to holler into her ear. _I_ _don't have time for cake or sweaty waiters. I need to talk to Franz,_ pronto _!_

She was about to do just that when something caught her eye.

In her peripheral vision, she saw a man at a table in the corner of the cafe watching her.

His eyes darted back down to the newspaper in his hands as soon as Sam turned her head to look, and by itself it wouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary. But as she was turning her head, she suddenly realized that he wasn't the only one with eyes on her.

The woman sitting in the lounge, sipping from a cup of tea.

The receptionist typing on a computer.

The security guard by the elevators.

Their eyes shifted away as soon as they detected her gaze on them, but it was enough for Sam to be majorly creeped out. As the only person coming up the red carpet on the stairs earlier, she could understand attracting some attention then, but now she was just an ordinary girl in a crowded lobby, having a cake with a friend, blending in and not sticking out. Or trying to, anyways.

 _So why are they looking at_ me _?_

Sam kept scanning the room. Most people were not looking at her, she realized. The few people she had seen were just exceptions to that rule. Most people were busy engaged in conversation with someone else or just minding their own business. A few, guards and staff mostly, even seemed studiously determined not to look at anything, staring off at nothing in particular with servile, blank expressions on their faces. She was just panicking, she thought. The stress was getting to her. Maybe she was tired from being jet-lagged or something.

 _Whew. Ok. Focus. Breathe, breathe. You're ok, there was a drink on the table, everything's safe -_

She tilted her head upwards, hoping to stretch out her neck, take a deep breath, and calm down a little, when she saw a woman in a white dress on the second floor balcony directly across from her. Their eyes met, and unlike everyone else she didn't flinch away from Sam's gaze. From across the room she bored into her eyes, staring with a disinterested, yet _dark_ look, as if she hated her and had sworn to be her enemy, but was putting off fighting her until after dinner. Though it lasted for only a few heartbeats before she looked away and walked off, it was enough to send a vicious chill creeping down Sam's back.

That was when she knew that something about the whole situation, the whole mission, was very, _very_ wrong.

Sam unslung the Jetpack Backpack and pulled out her M-Ray Contact Lenses, eliciting a raised eyebrow and a question from Marjorie, which she ignored, to Marjorie's visible nervousness. Dropping the Backpack next to her chair, she put the Lenses on and conducted another scan of the room, her vision now augmented by the ability to see through barriers and obstacles.

She didn't look for long before freezing dead in her tracks.

Everyone had a gun.

It wasn't just the guards. The receptionists, she saw, had handguns stashed under the counter. Men with tropical suits had them tucked into concealed shoulder holsters. Men without had them stuffed into waistbands and covered with their shirts. Women had them in purses or strapped to their legs, hidden beneath their skirts. The guards, the receptionists, the guests, the staff - well, ok, the staff was unarmed, she realized. Their shirts were tucked in, and their vests were too tight to hide a weapon. But a glance at the furniture on the first and second floors revealed that the garbage bins - fancy blocks of metal and wood, polished and decorated with unremarkable floral designs - contained not bits and pieces of garbage, but big, boxy things that she immediately assumed were machine guns. She noticed, for the first time, how the staff seemed to be dispersed throughout the room in such a way that they were all within easy and unobstructed running distance of a garbage bin.

She focused her gaze on Marjorie, who smiled weakly at her fearsome glare. She wasn't armed, actually - probably the only one in the room who wasn't, besides Sam. But was she a part of this?

 _The drink was on the table. Everything's safe._

Marjorie set her fork down. Her smile widened, in a gesture Sam recognized as being meant to reassure her.

 _Yup. She is._

Quickly, she made up her mind then and there.

"Would you excuse me for a moment?" Sam said in her sweetest, most insincere tone, as she slowly pushed her seat back and got to her feet. Turning to the side, she knelt down to scoop her Jetpack Backpack and her other gadgets off the floor.

In hindsight, kneeling down, as opposed to remaining standing or even bending over, was probably the best thing Sam did that day. She happened, purely by accident, to do it just at the right time to allow her to dodge the taser electrodes sailing through the air in her direction. She didn't even realize the significance of her action - didn't realize that she had been in such imminent danger at all - until she heard the electric crackle as the electrodes made contact, and Marjorie scream and tumble out of her chair, limbs flailing wildly on the floor, less than a second later.

In a flash, she turned her head to see the two men sitting together - the only two men in the cafe sitting together - standing next to her. One had his hands on a taser, whose electrodes were presently stuck to Marjorie's chest. The other one - the backup, Sam immediately realized - was reaching into his suit jacket, under his shoulder.

Moving on reflex, she quickly thrust her leg out, hitting her chair and sending it flying into the goon who'd been unlucky enough to miss her and hit Marjorie. He staggered backward with a painful shout and bumped into his colleague, distracting him just long enough for Sam to leap to her feet and slam the side of her left hand into his neck, right on the Adam's apple. He fell to the floor, eyes bulging, gasping for breath, with his own taser tumbling out of his jacket and onto the floor. Deftly, Sam scooped it up and turned it on the first man, who had recovered from being hit by the chair and was advancing on her with a cold menace in his eyes. That menace swiftly turned to surprise and then fear as Sam pulled down on the trigger. Unlike her, he didn't have time to duck, and with an impressive roar of pain he crumpled to the floor, spasmed for a few moments, then lay still.

Sam dropped the spent taser and quickly scooped her Backpack off the floor before quickly surveying the scene around her. Everyone in the room had dropped their thin pretenses of normality and was busy pulling their weapons out and training them on her, scrambling to and fro to line up better shots. Excited chatter in Thai and English filled the air, only to be drowned out by the lethal mechanical clicking of dozens of guns all cocking at once, and looking back Sam had to admit she'd been scared shi...she'd been scared _stiff_ by it all.

"Hold your fire! _Hold your fire!_ " A gruff voice bellowed over a loudspeaker. "Give it up, spy! We've got you surrounded! There's no escape!"

"No way," Sam growled. Thrusting her hand into the Backpack, she pulled out the Lipbalm Smokebomb and activated it, waving it in a circle around her and creating a ring of dense purple smoke that shielded her from the dozens of pairs of eyes peering at her over gunsights. With her other hand, she pulled her compowder out of her pocket and flipped it open.

"It's spy time," she breathed to herself.

Pressing a button, Sam watched as a beam of white-blue light shot out of the compowder and traveled the length of her body, and felt the familiar coolness of her green catsuit as it materialized over her skin. Heart pounding, she clipped the compowder onto her belt before activating her Jetpack Backpack, soaring above the smoke to survey the carnage that had overtaken the lobby.

Below her, voices chattered in quick, frantic Thai and English as the gunmen and -women darted back and forth to take cover and find vantage points with decent fields of fire, and from the sound of heated shouting, rapid footsteps, and the shuffling of furniture coming from under her Sam knew that going back to the ground floor was not an option. The second floor was a little less occupied, though - there were comparatively few goons, and the balcony wall, if she could clear out a safe spot, would shield her from gunfire coming from both floors, if any ever came her way.

Picking a spot next to a column, held by only two panicked-looking staff with a pistol and a machine gun, Sam rocketed forwards, diving low to evade their aim as they trained their guns on her before pulling up and grabbing the edge of the balcony. With the residual momentum from her Jetpack, she launched herself up and over the balcony, sailing over the heads of the two goons and landing behind them. With a flurry of swift kicks and punches she knocked both of them out, sending one tumbling to the ground floor and leaving the other slumped against the column.

She ducked down and overturned a nearby coffee table to give herself some cover before planning her next move. She needed to escape - there was no way she could take out forty or fifty bad guys with guns all by herself. But where? She peeked over the edge of the balcony. Not the front door - the security guards had blocked it off. She looked up. The glass dome on the ceiling? No - blocked by the chandelier. One of the massive windows in the walls? Some of them were blocked by trees, a few more were directly in the sun and she couldn't fly through that without being blinded, but the one directly across the room from her - yes, that one led straight out into the golden sky. That one was her ticket to freedom.

The sound of shoes thudding against the carpet interrupted her thoughts, and Sam turned around to see a squad of hotel staff, all Thai, all carrying small but lethal-looking machine guns, move in to corner her. She quickly pulled out the All-Weather Umbrella and activated its energy shield in anticipation of a deadly hail of gunfire, but none came. To her surprise and, briefly, horror, she saw that they were closing in on her, that they meant to grab and restrain her, not shoot her.

 _No time to waste, let's go let's go let's go._ Sam shut off the Umbrella and leaped off of the balcony, activating her Jetpack and steering herself towards her chosen window of escape. Reaching for her Laser Lipstick, she used it to cut a jagged, ugly, but conveniently Sam-sized hole in the glass, and held out her hands. Once she flew into the window, the glass inside the outline would pop right out, and she'd fly straight on through to freedom. Exhilaration coursed through her at the thought, and she delighted in seeing the horrified faces of the crooks below her, aghast at their quarry's impending escape.

 _So long!_ She thought. Her mission was all but forgotten at this point. Jerry's theory, Franz March, Tinker Tailor, all of it - nothing mattered but getting out.

It was with that mindset that Sam ignored the low, mechanical coughing sound behind her, and consequently she only recognized what it was after the bullets hit.

She had been just under halfway across the room, halfway to victory, when she gasped in pain, feeling as if someone had clubbed the back of her right shoulder twice with a metal baseball bat in rapid succession. All thoughts of escape abandoned for the moment, she drew her right arm to her body and nearly cried aloud at the evil, vicious burning in her shoulder. Peering behind her to survey the damage, she could see two neat, roughly finger-shaped holes in her catsuit just under the shoulderblade, from which a gentle stream of bright red blood was trickling and raining down on the floor below.

Gritting her teeth in pain, she was about to turn back and refocus on escape when she realized that the bullets which pierced her shoulder had first traveled through her Jetpack, which was sputtering and flaring and, to her horror, not responding to her attempts at control. Screaming from the agony and the now very real terror, Sam plummeted downwards and veered off to the side, missing the window entirely and instead flying straight into the wall next to it, crashing with a loud hurt shout. She had the good sense to bury her face in the crook of her good left arm before she hit, thus sparing her the further misery of a broken nose or even a broken neck, but that was the extent of her good fortune for the time being.

With her impact, her Jetpack flared for the last time and finally died. Sam fell from the second floor to the ground, hitting a light fixture and knocking over a potted plant in the process, and finally landed on her stomach in a corner of the lobby. With a monumental effort, she turned her head to the side, seeing dozens of henchmen, men and women, guests and staff and guards, converging on her as she lay prostrate on the carpet, with cold, victorious gleams in their eyes. With the last of her strength, she tried to get up and offer at least a feeble attempt at resistance, but the pain was too great and her energy had been expended, and she collapsed back to the floor, blacking out for the first time that day.

* * *

She didn't know it at the time, but Sam came to only a few minutes later, jolted out of her brief unconsciousness by an enraged bellowing that she dimly recognized as being done by the same gruff voice which had commanded her to surrender earlier.

"Fucking Thai amateurs!" A sudden sharp pop of a gunshot, and the limp thump of something heavy collapsing to the floor. "We wanted her _ALIVE_!"

"Someone get the doctor! NOW!" A voice was calling. The _doctor_ , _not_ a _doctor_ , she thought. It was an important detail, though she wasn't quite sure why at the moment.

"How does it look?" Was that coming from right next to her or a quarter mile away? Sam couldn't tell.

" _Hold_ your fire! I said _hold_ it! What damn part of that doesn't translate to Thai?" The gruff voice again, growing louder, speaking to the entire room or no one at all. Sam could feel the vibration of the carpet against her face as the massive footsteps came closer and closer.

A scuffed black shoe stepped in front of her face. A shadow, as someone bent over her. Callused fingers on her neck, groping clumsily for the dull, weak rhythm of her pulse. Absurdly, she thought of Blaine.

"Well, she's alive," the gruff voice said. "She's lost a hell of a lot of blood, though. It doesn't look good."

 _Have I_? Her eyes flickering down, Sam became aware of a spreading pool of red seeping into the carpet, crawling slowly towards her face and the black shoe. _Uh oh._

Unable to do anything else, Sam watched in morbid fascination as the blood slowly creeped towards the shoe, and felt oddly dismayed when its owner walked away before it made contact.

"Doc! There you are! What took you so long, you slow lazy bastard? Now listen, go stop the bleeding and do whatever it is you need to do to fix her up. I want her ready for transport within the hour, you hear me?"

The edges of Sam's vision were starting to darken. A new shoe - brown, not as scuffed - took the place of the black one, stepping on the red puddle that was, by now, frighteningly large.

"Oh, Doc, before I go - if she dies on us, so do you. So work hard, huh?" Each word came more softly than the one before.

Sam's last thought before she blacked out again was not so much a thought as it was a fantasy. With her last lucid moments, she imagined herself back in Jerry's office, reading over Franz March's file, with its reams of tax records and Jerry's red-and-green charts, and explaining to him, over steaming cups of Darjeeling tea, how the two of them had just walked right into the biggest sucker punch that ETOKA had ever thrown.


	6. Part One: Dean's Mission

**Content Warning:** Adult language

 _ **Part One: Dean's Mission**_

* * *

The truth was, if Mr. Lassing hadn't chosen to have a midlife crisis and trade his minivan in for a Porsche he would never have decided that going thirty-five miles over the limit on the freeway was a good idea, and consequently the new teacher would never have come to Tuesbad at all. Even after Lassing's accident Mr. Corley hadn't wanted to hire her, citing her youth and inexperience, and preferred to wait until a better replacement could be found instead. The problem with that, however, was that it had been mid-August and the first day of school had been only two weeks away, which meant that they needed someone to fill in for Lassing and they needed someone _now -_ unless Corley wanted to do it himself, and he did not. As principal, he had much more important things to do and honestly, he had had enough of teaching elementary school kids to last him a lifetime. He would have sent his vice principal to do it, but she had had the poor timing to deliver a baby boy at the beginning of the month and would be gone on maternity leave until well into the school year.

That had just left her, the fresh-faced girl - yes, a _girl_ , certainly not a _woman_ \- barely three months out of college, dumped on him by the school board after, he was sure, only a cursory examination of their substitute teachers pool, which was where all fresh recruits started off. They had forwarded him her resume before their first and only interview, and it had been enough to set off all sorts of alarm bells in his head almost as soon as he'd started reading it.

First of all, there was, of course, her age - twenty-two - which went hand in hand with the fact, worth repeating, that she had graduated only three months ago and had gotten her teaching license only one month ago. Corley had been in the public education game for over twenty years and had been Tuesbad's principal for the past five, and in his considerable experience people fresh from getting their diplomas tended to make...not the best teachers, to put it gently. There simply wasn't enough life experience: not enough wisdom to impart, or enough time spent getting your hands dirty in, and becoming used to, the grim sludge and muck of real life. These were the people, he often found, who burned out after two or three years and either turned to drink or drugs to cope with the stress or decided to stop giving a damn and do the bare minimum required of their jobs. So, age and inexperience: strike one.

Speaking of getting diplomas, the place she had gotten hers from posed another concern. Corley had never heard of Malibu University, and initially he thought she'd attended a community college of some kind - not that there was anything wrong with that, of course, but a principal likes his staff to be well-qualified, after all. Further research revealed that Malibu was not, in fact, a community college, but was actually a private university, which surprised Corley because the only private university in Malibu he was aware of was Pepperdine. Even further research revealed that the new teacher might as well have gone to community college after all - Malibu was, apparently, something of a party school, was ranked so low by _US News and World Report_ that Corley spent two full minutes scrolling down its rankings list to find it, and had an excessively welcoming 70% acceptance rate. These facts did not fill his heart with confidence. _Strike two._

Finally, there was the matter of just what she had been up to at Malibu University. A double major in Journalism and Elementary Education would have been time-consuming, Corley could imagine, especially when the necessary internships and jobs as a teaching assistant were taken into account. But even so, Corley reasoned, there would still be a substantial amount of free time left over for extracurricular activities, which were sorely lacking on her resume. She was a member of no major clubs, a sister of no major sororities, and held no positions in student government. So what did she do in her spare time? Corley didn't know, and that left room for all kinds of wild, unpleasant speculation. Did she do weed? Do stronger drugs? Get drunk? Sleep around? The possibilities were frightening to consider.

 _Well, three strikes and you're out_ , he had thought at the time.

With these doubts in mind he had phoned the school board the next morning to demand they send him a different candidate, only to be told that she was the best they had to offer and if Corley didn't take her, they would damn well scrape the bottom of the substitute pool for him, send him a barely-licensed politically-radical ex-con or God-knows-what. In the face of such a threat, Corley had muttered and grumbled and said he'd check her out, before slamming the phone into the receiver and wondering why the school board wanted to get rid of her so badly.

It was thus with a small but considerable degree of displeasure that he had sent her an e-mail to set a date and a time for her interview. She quickly confirmed, and the next day Corley found himself standing out in front of the school, waiting for her to drive by.

He hadn't been waiting out of politeness, or because he was eager to met her - far from it. The staff parking lot at Carter B. Tuesbad Elementary School was notoriously difficult to find, and Corley had expected that she would need some help. All newcomers did, and when he first came to Tuesbad he, too, had driven around the school in circles for ten minutes until a kindly janitor, taking pity on his clueless soul, had finally shown him the way.

The girl, however, had simply driven past him, down the street, and made a right, thus avoiding the first commonly-made mistake, before turning into the shady-looking path hidden behind the trees instead of driving past it, avoiding the second. Corley watched, a little dumbstruck. That was a surprise. Nobody knew to do that right off the bat besides those who had already found the path before.

Seeing as she needed no help, Corley decided to retreat to his office and meet her there, and spare himself the potential awkward silence that might ensue if he were to escort her in. It hadn't surprised him when she walked in only a few minutes after he did - part of that was Tuesbad having an open campus instead of a maze of hallways, of course, but it was also because she seemed to know her way around pretty well already.

They'd exchanged the usual greetings, and he had invited her to sit, politely wondered aloud whether her khaki suit and skirt made her uncomfortable in the merciless August heat, and offered her a glass of water before settling himself behind his desk. They started first with qualifications, and despite his earlier misgivings Corley found himself modestly impressed - not only by her recounting of her experiences as a TA and at various education internships, but also by how she was able to handle herself in a mature, professional way while also demonstrating a genuinely warm and friendly manner. That would go over very well with the kids, he thought. His only gripes were that the way she talked sounded like she was reading off a list or a script, and that she was a little slow to come up with specifics, like the name or characteristics of a mentor or coworker. But that was to be expected in interviews, he knew, so he let it slide.

Deciding that she would pass with respect to ability, he moved on to her education. He opened with her alma mater - why Malibu? She seemed smart and capable, he noted, catching the slight coloring of her cheeks at being complimented. He'd be willing to bet that she'd been that way even before college - a high school valedictorian, maybe? She nodded humbly, almost shyly - not the valedictorian, but yes, straight As, in honors and Advanced Placement courses to boot. Along with her high school extracurriculars and, she admitted sheepishly, her family's outrageous wealth, it was enough to get her into UCLA, USC, Berkeley, and a dozen other prestigious schools, including Corley's own alma mater. But in the end she'd gone to Mali-U, as she called it, to stay together with her best friends. Corley's eyes widened at that, and wasn't sure whether he should admire her loyalty or cry at her stupidity.

 _You gave up multiple chances at a first-class higher education_ \- opportunities for the rest of your life! - _for four more years of friendship._ He supposed it made sense - she said her family was loaded, after all - but she didn't strike him as the type of girl who'd be content living off of Mommy and Daddy's money for the rest of her life. A degree from, say, Berkeley or UChicago would have gone a long ways towards her independence and ambition. With great effort, Corley fought the urge to shake his head. _Hope your friends were worth it._

Putting off his incredulity, he had continued down the education track. Journalism and Elementary Ed - now there's an unusual combination of majors. Why did she pick those?

Her explanation for Journalism was passionate, convincing, and a little bit regretful. She was a naturally inquisitive and curious person, she said, and loved to get to the bottom of things and share what she learned with others, spreading the truth and enlightening the masses. She had wanted to enter the field after graduation, but - and here was the regret - she hadn't had time to find any good internship positions during college, and her job search had suffered because of that. Corley had smiled broadly as he listened, believing every word of it - except for the part about internships and job hunting, there was something fishy about the way she said it that he couldn't quite put his finger on. But he had been genuinely impressed by her enthusiasm and sincerity and was beginning to think that maybe she had the makings of a sound teacher after all, so he pushed that thought aside and tried to forget about it.

He failed, as he had listened to her describe her "long interest in public and specifically elementary education". It wasn't that she hadn't been believable - she was. Just not as energetic or zealous as she had been when she was talking about her journalistic aspirations. Corley could tell that she wouldn't mind being a teacher, but _wouldn't mind_ wasn't the same as _wanted_ , and though it was clear to him that was interested in and cared about teaching it was just as clear that she wasn't _as_ interested as she was about journalism, that she didn't care about it _as_ much. The fishy feeling came back to him as he watched her face and listened to her words - there was too much control in both, and he became certain that she was reading, almost verbatim, from a memorized speech of some kind. With effort, Corley fought off the urge to frown, not wanting to make her uncomfortable. But he knew that what she was telling him wasn't the truth - or rather, not the whole truth.

He paused for a moment before pursuing another line of questioning.

"Let's talk about your extracurriculars in college. According to your resume, you weren't very active in any on-campus activities and organizations, except for," he chuckled, "the university cafe. So what did you do in your down time, besides serving lattes?"

"I mostly just studied in my dorm and the libraries and hung out with my friends. We did everything together - went shopping, saw movies, studied, took trips. It was a lot of fun."

The second part of that Corley could believe. From everything he had heard so far, it sounded like she and her friends were pretty tight and had stayed that way through college, successfully avoiding drifting apart like so many other high school friendships. And she did seem like a hip and likeable girl, comfortable in social settings. It wasn't hard to imagine her lugging around an armload of shopping bags, wearing whatever clothing was fashionable among teenage girls these days, and gossiping with her clique of friends.

The first part, though, was bullshit.

No one should have studied that much for _anything_ at a school as dismally-ranked as Malibu. Not even a double major. Not even a hypercompetent overachieving workaholic who probably _liked_ to study.

Certainly not a girl as sharp as her.

So what did she do, then? Corley had wondered, as he watched her from across his desk. Hang out with her friends _all_ the time? Were they _that_ close?

Mentally, he shook his head. She wasn't that vapid. He knew her type, knew it from forty-six years of living: mature, responsible, smart - born leaders. People like that _needed_ to do something big, something grand, something ambitious, that interested them, that they were truly _passionate_ about. Their drive was what made them who they were, what defined them, what separated them from the common people. If they didn't do great things they'd just be mediocre like the rest of the world, and that would drive them crazy.

 _So what_ did _she_ _do?_

He had wanted some time to chew that over, to think a little more. He decided to stall.

"One last question. You seem to know your way around campus pretty well, and you're not even teaching here yet. You knew how to find the staff parking lot and everything."

He hadn't asked the question but she answered it anyways. "I came by yesterday evening to scout out the school for myself," she said, smiling. "I wanted to familiarize myself so I wouldn't get lost and be late for the interview. I learned a few months ago that you should never go to a place you haven't been to before without checking it out first." Her smile hardened.

Corley hadn't paid attention, having been too busy thinking about what to make of her. She had what it took, and definitely deserved her license, he admitted to himself, and seemed very intelligent and capable besides. But then again, they all did, didn't they? All new teachers - even the ones who discovered, far too late, that they were never meant to teach after all.

And, damn it, what was she hiding? What wasn't she telling him?

 _Hell, what is she doing at Tuesbad when she really wants to be a journalist? Why is she_ here _?_

* * *

In the end, it was just simple, merciless logic. They were missing one teacher. The new school year was twelve days away. Here was one teacher.

There were no real reasons to refuse. There was certainly no time to.

Swallowing a weary sigh and putting aside his uneasiness and his questions for the moment, Mr. Corley had picked up the phone and dialed slowly, punching in each digit with a languorous, dreadful tap of his finger.

"Hello, Miss Simpson. Doing good, thanks for asking. Listen, I've...been thinking about our interview today, and I've decided...to take you on board. I think you'll fit in well here, and we'll be lucky to have you." He smiled, a little sickly. "You're welcome. Yes, you'll start tomorrow. Come see me at 7:30 sharp so I can give you your keys and fill you in. Welcome to Tuesbad."


	7. Part One: Chapter One

**Author's Note:** My apologies for the delay. The past several weeks have been quite busy, and I had a hard time trying to figure out how to introduce Clover and Alex and handle the time skip between the Prologue and Part One.

Just for the record, from this point forward updates will be sporadic. I don't have a definite schedule down, but be prepared for months without an update. I apologize for that as well.

I also apologize if I have mischaracterized Clover and/or Alex. I have found that they're harder for me to write than Sam, who is by far the most "normal" of the girls and thus the easiest to relate to and characterize.

Finally, it's occurred to me that my exposition thus far may have been unclear. I wanted to be indirect and leave little clues to be pieced together, but clearly I need some work. For those of you who may be confused, here's a rough timeline of what's happened so far:

 **Mid-November, 201– :** Events of Dramatis Personae and Prologue Chapters 1-3. WOOHP has had a long run of bad luck, botched missions, and lost lives, placing Jerry under immense pressure from WOOHP's superiors at the UN Department of Political Affairs and from his rivals within WOOHP itself. Suspecting a traitor in the ranks, he commences Operation Impeachment, dispatching Sam to Bangkok to learn the name of the Syndicate spy who has penetrated the highest levels of WOOHP's leadership. It ends badly. The girls are in the first semester of their senior year at Mali-U.

 **Mid-February, 201– + 1 :** Events of Prologue: Sam's Mission. It's the next year. Three months have passed since Operation Impeachment. At some point, Sam was visited by Tomas Eviline in the containment center under WOOHP HQ before moving into an apartment somewhere not too long after, living by herself. Clover and Alex are in their second semester at Mali-U, but obviously Sam isn't there anymore.

 **Late August, 201– + 1 :** Events of Part One: Dean's Mission. Sam begins teaching at Carter B. Tuesbad Elementary School. Clover and Alex graduated from Mali-U back in May.

 **Early January, 201** **– + 2:** Events of this Chapter. It's been over a year since Operation Impeachment, over seven months since Clover and Alex graduated, and over four months since Sam began teaching at Tuesbad.

A lot of this has been stated/implied in what's been written so far, but it can be hard to spot on a first reading, or hard to put it together. Do not hesitate to PM me if you have further questions.

As always, my thanks for the kind reviews.

Some questions to keep in mind at this point are: What was Sam doing in a WOOHP containment center? What was Tomas visiting her for? Why is she living alone? Why is she a teacher now? **What happened in the three months between Operation Impeachment and Tomas' visit to the containment center?  
**

* * *

 ** _Part One: Dean's Mission_**

 ** _I_**

* * *

A titanic fist pounded on the door, harsher and more merciless than any alarm clock. "Wake up! Come on, it's time for school! Winter Break's over, let's go!"

"No...no..." Instinctively, Clover squeezed her eyes tighter and put her pillow over her head. She hated when this happened, and it happened _almost every morning_.

She could hear feet thumping away down the hall to make breakfast, oblivious to the low, feeble protests on the other side of the wall. With a long sigh, she lifted her pillow off of her head and sat up in bed. It was no use trying to fight it; every time Mr. Martinez' brat kid tried to squeeze in another few minutes of sleep, his dad would eventually come back and barge into the room and yell at his son to rouse him out of bed. Said yelling was bad enough by itself, but sometimes, when the kid proved more resistant than usual, Mr. Martinez would take the gloves off and start _singing_. That was the worst. Even if you slept through the knock and hid beneath your blankets from the shouting and yelling, only deafness could save you from a few off-key bars of the weird Mexican party song Mr. Martinez seemed to like so much. Not even earplugs worked - Clover had tried, and she was sleeping on the other side of the wall, in a whole other apartment.

Slowly, she swung her feet off her bed and was trying to stand up when it hit her. Pain, dull, not sharp, like a hundred sledgehammers constantly slamming into every part of her body but mostly her poor _head_. Groaning, she turned to her nightstand and fumbled around inside for the water bottle and Alka-Seltzer she specifically kept for emergencies such as this, as well as the Advil she kept for other problems. Popping both pills in her mouth and chugging down almost the entire bottle, she sighed tiredly and managed to haul herself to her feet without falling over.

 _It's not_ every _morning I wake up with a hangover. What was I doing last night_ _?_

Suddenly, Clover heard the door on the other side of the wall open and heavy footsteps come thudding in. _Uh oh._

"COME ON RUDY, IT'S 7:15, YOU GOTTA CHANGE AND EAT AND WASH, THE BUS LEAVES AT 7:40, LET'S GO LET'S GO."

She winced at Mr. Martinez' booming voice as it beat against her skull like a drum and sent hard lances of pain through her brain. On the other side of the wall, she could hear Rudy groan loudly and shuffle out of bed, as his father, his mission complete, walked away, humming contentedly as he did so. With the sigh of someone still relatively new to misfortune of this magnitude, Clover mentally swore to herself that one day she would find a new apartment, in a nicer building with thicker walls. Some day. Somehow.

A low moan and a rustle of sheets on the bed behind her indicated that Rudy wasn't the only one who had woken up just now. Clover turned around to see a well-built, reasonably tall, brown-haired man about her age trying to bury his face in one of her other pillows. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and she had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't wearing pants or underwear either. Frowning at the thought, she looked down to find that she, too, was in a similar state of undress.

 _Huh. So it's not_ what _I did last night, but_ who _I did._

Clover studied him from behind as he tossed and turned in bed. Was his name James? Josh? John? She couldn't remember, she realized as she walked around her tiny bedroom, scooping her clothes off of the carpet and dumping them in her laundry basket before opening her closet. Boy-crazy as she used to be - and still was, if she was honest with herself - it was unlike her to bring a guy back home with her these days. It just wouldn't _do_ for them to see her small, cramped, and messy apartment, with its thin walls and the rusty pipes under the bathroom sink and the big crack on the wall next to the door and...

She shook her head. If she kept on like this, she would drive herself crazy. Whining wasn't something successful, independent, young women did. Not that she was successful, but she was still young, and, given that she was living alone, pretty independent, for what it was worth.

Picking out a decent outfit (her range of options was so _limited_ \- most of her clothes were back at her mom's in Beverly Hills since her closet here was too small), she quickly slipped it on before turning to the male mass in her bed. He was _kind of_ cute, she thought as she gathered up his clothes, but not enough to be worth keeping around. Clover frowned. Come to think of it, there were _probably_ better-looking guys at wherever she was at last night. How she'd ended up with this one was beyond her. _Damn beer goggles._

"Wakey-wakey," she said dismissively, tossing his clothes on his head. Grabbing his wrist, she dragged him out of bed and dumped him on the carpet, eliciting a startled squawk and then a loud, long moan of agony. Belatedly, she realized he was as hungover as she was, if not more so. That would make kicking him out a little harder, but not much. She'd handled situations like these before - not often, mind you, but often enough that she knew what to do.

Walking into her kitchen, she grabbed a cup and washed it in the sink, grimacing at the unwashed pile of plates and bowls that lay there. Filling it with water from the (hopefully clean) tap, she walked back to her room and found another pill of Alka-Seltzer and handed both to the man, who was hunched over on the floor massaging his temples, underpants thankfully on.

"T-thanks," he croaked, downing the pill and draining the cup.

"Feel better?"

"G-give it some time."

Clover cleared her throat. "Hey, I've got to run some errands and head to work in like fifteen minutes and there's no way I'm leaving you here alone, so if you could dress and show yourself out _real_ quick that'd be really cool." She had neither errands to run nor a job to work at, but he didn't need to know that.

He nodded dazedly and Clover was struck once more by how _average_ he looked. Feeling a little disappointed in herself and her irresponsibility in making such a poor choice, she looked away as he dressed and escorted him wordlessly to the door, where he lingered for a moment and looked at her with what he probably thought was a soft and sexy look in his eyes. To Clover, though, it was pretty clear that this guy was begging for a kiss goodbye, her number, a "So, last night was fun", or possibly all three.

 _As if!_

With a stern look on her face she all but shoved him out the door and shut it before he could protest. As she heard his footsteps start dejectedly down the hall, she permitted herself a small sigh of relief. "Well, now that the trash's been thrown out, let's see what's been going on since I got wasted," she muttered to herself.

Her purse was lying on the couch, and after rummaging through it she pulled out her cell phone - oh, how she _missed_ her old compowder! - to check her notifications get up to speed. It was the usual morning news: disappointment, disappointment, and, to no one's surprise, more disappointment.

First, there were three new emails from prospective employers, informing her that while they were impressed by her resume and her submitted portfolio they would, regretfully, go with someone else, and that they wished her the best of luck in her job search. Clover gritted her teeth as she deleted the emails, and before she could stop it she found herself snarling in frustration. It was eight months since she'd graduated and all she had to show were two part-time internships - paid, thankfully - at Macy's and J. C. Penney. She hadn't landed a single job at one of the great designer houses and fashion magazines she once dreamed of: Gucci, Runway, Yves Mont Blanc...

Clover sighed sadly. She'd expected competition, of course, but she hadn't expected basically _everyone_ in LA and their sister to have a fashion degree of some kind. The fact that a fashion degree from Mali-U was basically worthless next to one from one of the dedicated fashion universities - and there were _way_ too many graduates of those running around for her liking - didn't help things one bit. Not for the first time, she wondered if she made the right choice staying in LA after graduation, or majoring in fashion, or even going to Mali-U in the first place.

The one solace she had been able to derive from all this was that if she couldn't find a job, neither could Mandy. She smiled, just a little cruelly. She had seen her once at an interview for an assistant buyer's job at American Apparel, walking out of the interview room with eyes wide as plates and brimming with tears, looking like she'd just been dumped, maxed out her credit card, and broken half her nails all at once. Of course, Clover's interview hadn't gone much better, but at least she got to see Mandy finally get a little comeuppance for all the years of snobbery and meanness. Old grudges died hard.

 _Then again,_ she thought, her smile swiftly turning into a scowl, _Mandy's the type of spoiled brat who probably wouldn't mind living off of her parents' dime for the rest of her life._ I'm _doing something better._ I'm _independent!_

 _Huh. Speaking of living off of parents' dimes...I wonder if...  
_

Yup. The second misfortune of last night was that her mom had texted again, wondering if she had enough money to pay for rent and groceries and asking why Clover didn't just move back in with her and Dad at the old mansion back in Beverly Hills. It wouldn't be so bad if this was the first or the tenth time she did this, but this was the twenty-third time, and Clover had had enough passive-aggressive worrying and condescension in the last eight months to last her for her next eight lifetimes. Snarling once more, she quickly tapped out a reply, reassuring her that everything was fine (it wasn't), that she had enough money (she did, but only for one more month), that she was close to landing a job sometime very soon ( _HA!_ ), and hoping fervently that this would be the last time she had to deal with this.

She sighed wearily as she sent the message. _This whole independence thing is kinda overrated, to be honest._ _Maybe moving back in wouldn't be such a-_

Clover seized that thought and, with a brief rush of iron willpower, swiftly banished it from her mind. "Nope! Nuh-uh!" She said aloud, shaking her head. "I am going to _make it_ , on my own, out here in the big city. I am _not_ some loser crybaby who lives with her parents. I am _totally_ going to _be_ someone!"

It occurred to her that she was saying that more and more these days, yet it was becoming harder and harder for her to believe it.

She grunted in anger and plopped herself down on the sofa. _Calm down, girl._ _Positive thoughts, positive thoughts, imagine yourself working at Prada or Mandy's head being shaved or something._ Life was depressing enough on its own; it didn't need her help.

 _Speaking of depressing..._

With a grim sense of foreboding, Clover went back through her email, her text messages, her Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. This third disappointment was one that she had gotten used to long ago - since before she graduated, in fact - but that didn't make it hurt any less.

"Still no sign of Sam," she murmured softly to herself.

She sighed sadly and felt a sharp stab of worry and fear in her heart. It had been more than a year since _that night_ , more than a year with not a word of her, no news, not knowing where she was, whether WOOHP had found her yet, or even if she was - she mentally braced herself for the thought - dead or alive. It was _killing_ her inside, squeezing, crushing, drowning her heart in fear and anguish every day - she would give anything to know, even if she was dead, to just _know_ , with the cold comfort of certainty, what had happened to her, how she was, anything at all that could help provide closure to the gaping hole torn in her when Sam had been ripped from her life.

She had been so bitter towards her because of Blaine, but now she missed her _so much._ If only she had known that she might never see her again...

 _I really wish I answered that call._

Suddenly, as Clover always did when she thought of Sam and _that night_ , she felt the onslaught of a hundred different emotions all at once, all of them familiar to her but no less poignant or painful because of it. Regret, loss, anger - they coursed through her sadly and grievously, as they had a thousand times before, but of the feelings she experienced the one that presented itself most readily to her was _confusion_ , a sense of the utter, incomprehensible craziness of everything that had happened. It had all the surrealism and irrationality of a dream, except that it was all unmistakably real, which was the craziest part of it all. No matter how hard Clover tried to wrap her head around it - and she had really _tried,_ countless times - she could never make sense of any of it, never find a reason or an explanation or a justification, and always ended up with more questions than she had when she began.

Part of that, of course, was because there was so much about _that night_ that she simply didn't know, even now, over a year later. Clover had only learned about what happened the next morning, when she realized that Sam hadn't returned to their dorm, and when she got to WOOHP HQ she had found herself locked out of the loop. Patrick Alister - who had already taken over as Acting Director by then, mere hours after everything went to hell - had put out a blanket ban on discussing anything officially having to do with Sam's mission while he, Blaine, Rick, and Tomas sorted out the mess. Clover was not invited to help and her frantic questions were ignored, and consequently the only way she could gather any information on what was going on was through the highly unofficial WOOHP rumor mill, whose products were spreading through HQ and the WOOHP branch offices like wildfire.

It had taken her a long time to sift through the various fantastical accounts and shameless speculation, but eventually she had been able to put a story together. Jerry had sent Sam to Bangkok on a mission called "Operation Impeachment" or something. She had gone alone, and absolutely no one at WOOHP, the DPA, or the Thai government had been told beforehand. No one could agree on why she had gone - the contemptuous, Patrick, Blaine, and Tomas among them, said it was part of a desperate attempt to save Jerry's dying career, while the more sympathetic, like Rick, insisted that Jerry must have had his reasons, whatever they were. Either way, it had ended really soon, when Sam had been shot and kidnapped by gangsters from the local triads after a fight at some hotel. Security footage from the hotel, including frames prominently displaying Sam's battered body lying in a pool of blood, had been uploaded to the Internet and shown on the nightly news, which set off a huge scandal as the UN, the Thai government, and, for some reason, the Canadian government all demanded explanations and demanded Jerry's immediate firing.

But even after Clover had put the pieces together and worked out that story, there were still too many questions left unanswered. _Why was Sam sent to_ Bangkok _, of all places? Why did she go alone? Why wasn't I told? Why wasn't_ anyone _told?_ _Why send her? Why? Why, why,_ why _? What was even the point of the whole thing?_

It didn't help that the one person who could answer all those questions had died not too long after.

 _Jerry...what were you thinking?_

Another sharp pang of loss seized hold of her as she remembered how _that night_ had claimed not one, but two victims.

Some other things had she learned, in the chaotic aftermath of _that night,_ were the reasons why Patrick was calling himself "Acting Director" and why, despite the awfulness of everything that had happened, he seemed positively giddy, in a callous, insufferable way that made Clover want to sock him in his long, wrinkly face. Apparently, after the first news reports from Bangkok had started coming in, Jerry, who had been at HQ that night, left for home. On his way back, he had suffered a heart attack on the highway and crashed into another car. The doctors blamed it on stress and exhaustion from overwork, and Clover supposed that might be true, given how he had been locking himself away in his office for months. She couldn't ask him about that, though - or about anything else, for that matter - because as soon as she and Alex made it to the hospital he was staying at they had been turned away by a group WOOHP agents, who were guarding his room like he was under arrest or something. They had orders from the Head of Agents, Tomas Eviline himself, to refuse entry to anyone who wasn't on a special list of approved visitors, and unfortunately, the girls were not among them.

He had died there, two weeks later, on a cool December morning. About five or six dozen people came to his funeral, mostly WOOHP personnel. Patrick - _Director_ Patrick Alister by then - Blaine, Rick, and Tomas had shown up, although both Patrick and Tomas had looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. Oscar Goodluck, the DPA liaison to WOOHP, had also come, representing his boss, the Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection, who felt it might not be right to attend. Britney hadn't come. The priest, Clover remembered, had a stutter. Only a few besides Clover and Alex shed tears.

By then, Clover had already been fired by Patrick, and Alex had already replaced her as Head of Spies.

* * *

That had been over a year ago.

Since then, Clover had devoted herself full-time to the business of forgetting. WOOHP, Jerry, Patrick Alister and his three-piece band - she wanted no more to do with any of it. She made an exception, however, for anything that related to Sam, or her old missions before she became Head of Spies. Back then things had been simple and, honestly, kinda fun, just the three of them taking orders from Jerry and saving the world from kooky baddies with funny names and wacky evil plans, and she wouldn't mind remembering that. Now, though, after _that night_ , things were _way_ too complicated and uncertain for her, and the feelings she experienced as a result...

Yes, Clover was sure, she was better off forgetting it. Move on with her life. Heck, get a life to begin with.

But that was harder than it sounded, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, there was all the trouble with getting a fashion job with nothing on her resume except a lousy Mali-U degree. Secondly, there was the ever-present thought of Sam, hanging onto her conscience and not letting go.

Finally, Clover thought, standing in her doorway after a 5 PM trip to the dry cleaners, there was the fact that her one remaining best friend was currently sitting on her couch, dressed in a clean, pinstriped business suit, and holding... _something_ in her hands, which she was studying quite intently.

 _How did she get in?_ Clover wondered, before noticing the Multi-Function Charm Bracelet on Alex's wrist. _Oh. That explains a lot._

Feeling Clover's eyes on her - or, more likely than not, hearing Clover open the door - Alex looked up from whatever she was looking at and set it back on the coffee table in front of her. Belatedly, Clover realized it was the framed picture she had of her, Alex, and Sam at the beach with Jerry, back when they were still in high school. It was a copy of the one they had each kissed and signed and given to Jerry, back in happier times. Recognizing it now, Clover couldn't help but feel a tingle of longing, and a yearning for days gone by.

Those warm emotions were soon dispelled, though, as Alex stood and looked at her and smiled cheerfully and expectantly. _What's she doing here?_

"Alex," Clover began hesitantly, "I thought we were meeting for dinner tomor-"

"Change of plans, girlfriend." Alex sounded and looked as amiable as ever, but Clover saw something in her eyes - a flash of impatience, of haste, and of... _concern_ , like she had something important on her mind but couldn't say it. With a start, she began to realize that this was not a social call.

"I'd leave that jacket on if I were you," she continued, walking towards her, her high heels tapping against the hardwood floors. "We're going for a drive."


	8. Part One: Chapter Two

_**Part One: Dean's Mission  
**_

 _ **II**_

* * *

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Clover had heard that before. She wasn't certain about where she'd found that - either in a half-remembered literature class that mostly flew over her head, or in some cheesy soap opera that was trying its hardest to be profound - but she had absolutely no doubts as to the truth of the statement itself. The present moment was serving for her as a case in point: even after Sam disappeared, Jerry died, Patrick took over, Clover was kicked out, and she was promoted, Alex was _still_ a completely awful driver.

"LOOK OUT!" Clover screamed and covered her face with her arms as Alex's car narrowly dodged an annoyingly slow-moving minivan, only to place itself right in the blind spot of a titanic semi truck lugging an oversize load on its trailer. Alex screamed too - which was totally unfair, considering how it was _her_ lousy driving which was putting them in constant danger of wrecking in the first place - and quickly stamped down on the accelerator, sending them rocketing forwards, right towards the rear end of an ancient buggy from the 80s that looked like it would crumple like tin from the impact of Alex's sedan. With a frantic and deft turn of the wheel, Alex managed to shift, at the last minute, into a lane that was miraculously relatively clear of traffic, and with a tremulous sigh of mixed relief and exasperation Clover put her arms down and turned to glare at her friend.

"How _on Earth_ have you not been arrested yet?" She demanded irately, before holding up a hand as Alex opened her mouth. "No. Don't answer. Just know that on our way back, _I'm_ taking the wheel."

Alex pouted. "It's not my fault! I almost never drive on the highway, and when I do the roads are clogged so bad I could get around faster if I walked. Traffic never moves this fast."

"Why do we have to drive all the way out to _his_ home anyways? Why can't we just meet in his office, or my place, or at a Starbucks? Then we could drive local, and if we - I mean _you_ \- crashed it would be at 30 or 40, not-" Clover leaned over to peek at the dashboard. "Oh my gosh, Alex, you're _crazy!_ Speeding much?"

"It's a long story," Alex said, trying, and failing, to be dismissive. "You'll see when we get there."

"Does it have something to do with _why_ he wants to see me in the first place? After totally dissing me when I was fired?"

Alex brightened. "Yes!" She exclaimed. "That's exactly it! Good guess!"

"And you're still not going to tell me what it is, are you?" Clover leaned back in her seat, feeling comfortable, and safe, for the first time since she'd strapped herself in. She looked out the window gloomily, watching the dying rays of the sun casting shadows on the innocent city behind them as they sped ever further away. Feeling quite annoyed at being summoned so suddenly, so presumptuously, after everything she had done to put WOOHP behind her, she completely missed Alex's apologetic confirmation, and it was only after LA had slipped away over the horizon, when the awkward silence had grown too strong to ignore, that she realized what she had happened.

"Wait, sorry, what did you say?"

"Nothing." Glad that Clover had snapped out of her trance, but also not eager for her to try squeezing details out of her again, Alex quickly tried to change the subject. "Do you know what 'lateralism' means?"

"Uh, no. Why would I?"

"It's how WOOHP is organized these days. Been that way for a couple of months now." Clover started to say something, but Alex cut her off. "Yeah, I know, you don't care about anything WOOHP-related anymore, but this is important, alright? It's...kind of related to the reason why he wants to see you." Sensing that she now had Clover's attention, Alex continued, "Yeah, anyways. Lateralism. WOOHP used to go up and down. Now it goes side to side."

"Um...what are you talking about?" Next to her, Clover wondered how this night could get any weirder.

Helplessly, Alex shrugged and smiled sheepishly. "I...don't really know, actually. That was just the diagram they used on the PowerPoint. There were a lot of meetings and presentations about it that I _might_ have slept through, and a ton of memos that I straight up didn't read, but the point of it is that - well, remember how WOOHP used to be, back when Jerry was still in charge? The way things worked was that all the branch offices reported to Blaine, all the spies reported to you, all the agents to Tomas, and all the investigators to Rick, while Jerry was on top of everyone, in charge of everything. When a branch office had an idea for a mission, the Head Manager would tell it to Blaine, who would ask Jerry for permission to go ahead. If he said it was ok, Jerry would tell you and Tomas to tell your people to go and do that mission. When it was over, all the information we learned and any bad guys we captured would go to Rick and the investigators for processing or whatever. You remember?"

"Remember boring office protocol?" Clover scoffed. "Are you kidding?"

Alex pressed on, undeterred. "Around a month after you were fired, Patrick decided to squeeze Operations Section, Agents Section, and Investigations Section into one big organization. It's called WOOHP Central Command, and it's...it's like..." She fumbled for a moment for the right words, the right image, before settling on, "It's an agency inside of an agency. All the top operations managers, agents, and investigators are a part of it. Blaine's Head of Central Command, Rick Boring is Deputy Head, Tomas Eviline does...something, I guess. I must have fallen asleep at that part of the presentation." Almost on cue, she yawned, as if telling the story was as boring to her as listening to it was to Clover.

"Anyways, WOOHP Central Command's basically in charge of everything now. All the investigators, spies, agents, and branch offices report straight to Central Command, so whenever something happens Central Command can learn about it and do something right away, instead of having to wait for Jerry or the Section Heads for permission and instructions like back in the old days. And since only the top officers are a part of it it makes us more 'secure' or something."

Despite herself, Clover's curiosity couldn't help but be piqued. "Are you a part of it?"

Alex shook her head - a little bitterly, Clover thought. "Nope. Being Head of Spies isn't what it used to be when you and Jerry were around. Patrick hates Spy Section, and he's cut us out of all the decisions. Central Command gives orders to us, but we don't get a say about anything that it does. Heck, we don't even _know_ what Central Command does until it tells us to do something. It's like that for everyone, actually, even the agents, investigators, and branch offices. Central Command never tells anyone what they're planning, what they're doing, or why they're doing it, and they don't answer any questions. They're so secretive. It's _super_ unfair."

"Where does Patrick fit into this?"

This time, Alex laughed aloud. "Please! Patrick's the laziest jerk I ever knew. He gives Blaine, like, goals and guidelines and stuff, and then just checks in every once in a while to see that everything's going alright. He only gets involved when Blaine's working with national law enforcement groups and needs Patrick's connections to help coordinate things. It's really Blaine who's running WOOHP these days. All Patrick does is talk on the phone with people at the UN and Interpol and other funny police agencies. Sometimes he even takes business trips to the UN Headquarters in New York. Well, _he_ calls them business trips - they're so long, they're practically vacations."

"What's he doing there?"

"Meeting with his friends at the DPA and the rest of the UN. Trying to get the WOOHP budget increased. Sitting in on his boring committee, and a bunch of other ones too. They really love him there - he gets the full VIP treatment, red carpet and everything. They never did that for Jerry," Alex grumbled. "Oh - speaking of Jerry."

She pointed out the window as they passed by a road sign. Though they were moving disconcertingly fast, Clover was able to get a good view of it as they drove by.

"The Gerald J. Lewis Memorial Highway," she muttered softly to herself. The last time she drove down this road it had just been another nameless stretch of highway - it would only be a week later, after Jerry finally died, that LA County decided to honor his memory by renaming the stretch of road he'd wrecked on in his name.

"I almost never drive on this road," Alex confessed quietly. Clover nodded, having herself only driven down the road twice, more than a year ago - once on her way to see the same person they were going to now, and once on her way back.

"Do you ever think of him? Jerry?" Clover asked, as she stared out of the window. The highway here meandered along a cliffside overlooking the Pacific, making for a truly spectacular view, especially as the Moon and stars began to rise over the horizon and cast their light on the gentle waves beneath them.

There was a silence, not unwelcome, as Alex pondered for a moment. "Sometimes. I try not to," she admitted. "On one hand, I love him, you know? For all the years and missions and for being a friend to us. But on the other...I just can't forgive him for what happened to Sam. I just keep thinking that it was all his fault, and our not being able to see him before he died, to hear him explain himself, just makes it worse." She sighed. "It's hard to...to balance the love with the anger. When I try to get mad at him, I remember the good times we had. When I try to imagine him back in the old days, I remember that Sam isn't with us anymore because of him. So I just stopped thinking about him a while ago. Move on, right?"

"Right," Clover said softly. She knew exactly what Alex was talking about.

Another silence settled in as they sped along the cliffs, high above the sea, and before they knew it they were driving alone, the beams of Alex's headlights being the only light in the darkness save for the indifferent and faint lights of the sky. They continued this way for another few minutes before the silence grew unbearable, and before she could stop herself Clover blurted out, "Have you- Is there any news of Sam?"

She winced immediately. _Talk about a way to make this more depressing..._

"Nope," Alex said glumly. "Everything Sam-related is still off-limits for discussion. The only people who can talk about it are the guys and girls in Central Command, and they don't seem to care."

Clover raised an eyebrow at that. "Not even Blaine?" She asked. As much as she missed her ex-boyfriend, and as angry as she'd been with his dating Sam, even she had to admit that they...they were...well, they'd been cute together, and seemed to like each other a lot.

 _Of course they did. You walked in on them making out in the dorm once._

Gritting her teeth, she quelled the renegade memory with more violence than was necessary and tried to return to her original train of thought. She found it difficult - almost impossible - to believe that Blaine would give up on her so easily. If it had been Clover who had been captured, she was certain, he would move heaven and earth to save her. That was the Blaine she knew - loving, loyal, unbearably sweet...

 _...who broke up with me for basically no reason at all, who rebounded with my best friend...it's been like three years already, stop wishing he was back and get over it...he's just another part of WOOHP to forget..._

But he wasn't. That was the problem. Clover made room in her memory for Sam and her missions, and the latter included her time with - her love for? - Blaine. She'd tried to shut him out before, tried to resent him for his partnership with Patrick Alister, his driving Sam to betrayal, but it never worked for long. Every now and then, when she saw dumb college boys playing volleyball on the beach, or a guy with his haircut or build on the street, he would infiltrate her mind again, a drug of her past.

So engrossed with her disobedient, passionate, and conflicted memories, she completely missed Alex's response to her question again, and Alex, intuitively understanding the cause of her silence, decided to let it pass.

They drove on for another fifteen minutes that passed like fifteen hours, eventually coming to a luxurious cliffside villa, a sleek, modern mound of glass and shiny metal, perched on the side of the road, surrounded by a high stone wall with a barred steel gate in the driveway. A single intercom box stood next to the gate like a lonely sentinel, unremarkable but familiar to Clover, who had used it herself a little over a year ago, in the last week of Jerry's life, on the same day she had been fired from WOOHP.

Alex rolled down her window and stuck her arm out, pressing the button on the intercom. "It's me, Oscar. I've got Clover. Open up!"

The gate slid open without a reply.

* * *

It was almost exactly the same scene that Clover witnessed two Novembers ago, down to the rose bushes lining the driveway into the courtyard and the tall, polite figure waiting on top of the stairs to the villa, wearing a neatly-fitted suit and an impeccably-knotted tie, with his hands clasped primly behind him. The only difference was that it was night this time, and it was Alex driving, not herself.

Alex parked right in front of the steps, and she hadn't even switched off the ignition before Clover was out and stomping her way up, bounding angrily up the stairs, two at a time. Surprised at her speed, the figure at the top began making his own way down, descending slowly and gingerly, and they met somewhere above the middle, with Alex still starting her way up.

"Oscar Goodluck," Clover said, snarling out the name like a curse. Unconsciously, her fists were clenched.

For his part, Oscar smiled and held out his hand, looking down on her with an easy affability that was so casual as to be unintentionally condescending. Officially the DPA liaison to WOOHP, representing the interests and concerns of the Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection in particular and the United Nations at large, Oscar had an awful and only partially-deserved reputation at WOOHP for being, more often than not, the bearer of bad news - whenever a funding request had been denied, or the Assistant SG was impatient with a WOOHP slow cycle, or the UN was having a tantrum about something in general, it was Oscar who was sent to wield the axe. His role as messenger worked both ways, actually - just as he was responsible for delivering edicts from the DPA, he was also responsible for bringing requests from WOOHP to his superiors in New York, which used to be acted on promptly but were later, during Jerry's disastrous last months, frequently ignored, which did not make him better liked at WOOHP. "Every time Goodluck calls is bad luck for me," Jerry had once said, and Clover, despite having not yet met Oscar at the time, had been inclined to believe him.

"Good evening, Clover," he said, his rich, melodious African baritone ringing pleasantly. His smile faltered a little when he realized that Clover meant to leave his outstretched hand hanging, but aside from that he seemed to take her angry presence in stride. "Thank you so much for coming out here, on such short notice. It has been some time since we last spoke, hasn't it? How have you been? Working in the fashion industry now, am I correct?"

"I'm _retired_ , Oscar. Patrick fired me, and when I came to you for help you told me to get lost! I don't know what you want from me now, and I don't care! I've had it with you, Patrick, WOOHP, everything. The only reason I came here tonight is so I could repay the favor and let _you_ down for a change. Go find someone else to solve whatever problem you're having. I'm _finished_."

Oscar held up his hands, as if shielding himself from Clover's venomous glare. "Please, Clover, let us stick to the facts here. I didn't tell you to get lost, I said there was nothing I could do. And there wasn't - Patrick was well within his authority to fire you. And," he went on, his eyes hardening, his smile fading all the way, "I think, maybe, when you have heard what is said, you will change your mind about being finished with WOOHP. Please, follow me, if you will."

He started up the stairs and before turning around, waiting expectantly for her to follow. Clover glared at him and stayed still, but a nudge and a pleading look from Alex, who had joined her on the stairs by then, compelled her, very reluctantly, to start moving again.

They walked up the stairs and into the house, which was as Clover remembered it - sleek and minimalist, with tasteful furniture arrayed becomingly against the dark amber tones of the hardwood floors and the subtle green wallpaper. As Clover entered, she saw a young girl on top of the stairway, in a T-shirt and shorts whose cheap simplicity clashed with the expensive austerity around her. She watched her for a moment, fascinated, before the girl was shooed off by a woman in similarly casual attire.

"My wife and daughter," Goodluck explained offhandedly. "Winter break is over, and my girl is back to school. Please be quiet, so she can work without disturbances. There have been enough already."

"Like what?" Clover growled, but otherwise keeping her anger and annoyance down to a simmer for the family's sake. Oscar Goodluck might be an oily sleazeball, but that didn't mean his wife and girl were.

Oscar didn't reply, instead leading them down a hallway and stopping before a door. Her irritation growing, Clover turned to Alex for support, only to find her friend wearing a steely, yet dreadful expression on her face, as if she was bracing herself for what was on the other side of the door. Concerned, she turned back to Oscar, who was looking similarly uncomfortable, as if in anticipation of an unpleasant ordeal.

Slowly, he rapped on the door. "Dina," he said, "it's me."

There was a _click_ as a lock was turned, followed by the knob, and the door swung open, revealing a dimly-lit lounge and two people, a man sitting on a sofa in the middle of the room and a woman behind the door. The man's figure was lit only in silhouette, denying Clover a good look at his features, though something about his shadowy outline seemed familiar, even attractive. As for the woman, though...

"Hey," Clover began. "Have we met before? You know, you look, like _..."_

The words failed to come to her. The woman was both much better-lit and much closer, allowing Clover a quick but thorough once-over with her discerning fashionista's eye. She was about her height but a little older, with silky copper hair tied into a thick bun and the hint of a widow's peak. Round purple studs were pinned to her lobes, matching the light purple business suit and tie she wore - the latter of which was a complete _faux pas_ for a girl, Clover thought. Her face, neither round nor sharp, triggered a memory, but no name, and she concluded lamely, "Ok, I _swear_ I've seen you before."

The woman smiled. "That's because you have," she said, in a soft but measured voice, carrying the trace of a posh English accent not unlike Jerry's. "I'm Dina. I was Jerry's personal assistant once, during a mission you girls had once, many years ago. The one with the ancient cult of misanthropic female wrestlers."

"Women of Wrestling!" It all came back to her now. "What are you doing here?"

Her eyes dropped, and with a twinge of regret, she said, "After your mission, Jerry had me...reassigned, for reasons which were entirely outside of my control." The last part of the sentence sounded defensive, and with a bitter flicker of the eyes, she went on, "For the past seven years I've served as Mister Goodluck's personal bodyguard."

Oscar nodded. "Jerry wanted to fire her, for reasons which, like she said, were not at all her fault. But he must have thought that assigning you to me was the worse outcome." He chuckled. "Enough of the distant past. Now for the recent past. Please, Clover, Alex, after you. Dina, keep watch outside, please."

He ushered them into the room, closing the door behind them and locking it. Turning to the man on the sofa, who by now had gotten to his feet, he said, "You know Clover, don't you?"

"Yeah, of course I do," said the man as he walked towards them, the shadows retreating from his figure as he stepped into the light. "I trained her once, didn't I, Clover?"

He spoke in a soft voice, with a gentle, easygoing tone that, even after the tragedies of the years, still made Clover's heart flutter just a little, and if she wasn't already staring him in the eyes it would have banished instantly all doubts as to who he was.

"How's it going, Clover?" Dean asked, smiling boyishly. "It's been a real long time."


	9. Part One: Chapter Three

**_Part One: Dean's Mission  
_**

 ** _III_**

* * *

The four of them stood in the center of the room, Alex and Oscar watching on either side as Clover embraced Dean in a grateful hug. _He's not Blaine_ , she thought, _but it's good enough_.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, looking up at his smiling face. He looked...different from what she remembered. His haircut was shorter, his skin tanner and rougher, and his eyes more mature and more weary, but in all there was enough of the boy - the man now, really - she knew from before to trigger a warm swelling of affection in her breast. The fact that they hadn't seen each other in months - had it been that long? - helped refine and enhance her emotions, and it was hard to feel anything else at the moment beyond the pure and simple joy of reconnecting with a dear and long-lost friend.

But feel something else she did. "Is this why you brought me here?" She let go of Dean and turned to face Alex, who was watching them with a faintly bemused expression on her face. _Jeez, g_ _et a room_ , it seemed to say. "To see Dean again? What's going on?"

It was Oscar Goodluck who answered. "In part, yes. But mostly, Clover, we would like you to listen, not just see. Please, sit." Taking her by the arm in a gesture of unwelcome presumption, he guided her to a plush armchair facing directly the sofa, practically pushing her into it before settling himself into an identical chair next to hers. Across from them, Dean sat back down on the sofa, leaning back and crossing his legs casually, with a wistful smirk on his face. Alex also sat on the sofa, but she made an effort to put as much distance between her and Dean as possible, leaning back on an armrest and crossing her arms, fixing Dean with a irritated glare to which he was entirely oblivious. That confused Clover; back when they'd first met Dean Alex had been just as smitten as the rest of them, and they'd always been on friendly terms since then - before Clover was fired, anyways. She wondered what could have happened since then to turn Alex against him so.

Oscar crossed his own legs and lounged back in his chair, making a show of making himself comfortable. "Alright, Dean, you may begin," he said, trying to sound casual but letting a trace of apprehension slip into his words nonetheless.

Dean grinned. "Alex and Mister Goodluck here have already heard this, so this is just for you, Clover. I've got a story to tell you, and it's all about spies. And if it's true - which I really think it is - then you guys," he looked at Alex, Oscar, and Clover, one after the other, "are going to need a whole new WOOHP."

 _What?_ _A whole new WOOHP?_ Frowning, she looked at Alex, hoping she might give her a reassuring or enlightening gesture, but Alex was still engrossed in giving Dean the evil eye, and with a growing sense of uneasiness she turned her attention back to him.

"It happened around seven months ago-"

"June," Alex snapped. "Keep it specific, alright?"

"Alright, June," Dean said, having lost none of his pleasantness. "It was a month after you girls graduated, around the time Patrick was knighted-"

"Wait, what?" Clover's eyes widened. "Patrick was _knighted_?"

She looked at Alex, who took a break from scowling at Dean to look sheepish and apologetic. "Oops. Yeah, I forgot to tell you about that. Patrick got knighted by the Queen of England, like, at the start of June or something, not long after we graduated, so it's technically _Sir_ Patrick Alister now. It's old news at this point, everyone's gotten used to it, which was why I forgot to bring it up."

"Why didn't you tell me back then?" She asked. Alex only huffed and rolled her eyes, looking up at the ceiling exasperatedly, and Clover at once knew. _Oh, right. My whole getting-over-WOOHP thing. I didn't care about anything that happened there anymore._ It was only now, now that she had been dragged out of her humdrum post-WOOHP existence into this nebulous, mysterious affair, that her old stance seemed like a bad idea.

 _First lateral-whatever-it's-called and now_ Sir _Patrick. How much has changed? What else don't I know?_

The uncertainty and ignorance in those questions made her uncomfortable, so she quickly abandoned them in favor of a feeling she was more familiar with: outrage. "They knighted _Patrick_ but not _Jerry_?" She was glad to hear the indignation in her voice. " _Totally_ unfair much? What did he even-"

Next to her, Oscar cleared his throat loudly. "Like I said, enough of the _distant_ past, more of the _recent_ past, please. Continue, Dean."

Dean had sat back and watched the exchange with an amused look on his face. "Thanks, Mr. Goodluck. Anyways, like I said, it happened in June. Things were pretty quiet back in Spy Section. Peter was just back from a mission in Rome, Cynthia from Rio, and aside from that there wasn't a heck of a lot going on. Everyone was just playing ping-pong and cards on the tenth floor. Right, Alex?"

The tenth floor was where Spy Section's offices were at WOOHP HQ, where Clover and now Alex kept tabs on and sent orders to the roughly five hundred catsuit-clad teenagers and young adults, organized into three-person teams spread out throughout the branch offices, who constituted WOOHP's most iconic and, in Clover, Alex, and the late Jerry's opinion, most effective crime-fighting force.

"Right," Alex muttered.

Suddenly, Dean continued, out of nowhere, WOOHP Central Command had passed down a high-priority request from the WOOHP Singapore branch.

"The agents at the Singapore branch had spotted a bunch of confirmed Yakuza members coming in on a flight from Osaka, along with a bunch of other Japanese tourists, as part of a tour group or something. The Singapore government gave the branch permission to do some groundwork, conduct some surveillance - you know, the usual stuff - but they wanted a closer look. They wanted a spy to go in, undercover, and get close to this one Yakuza who went out to drink, do drugs, and chase girls every night at the clubs. I guess they thought if they could get him drunk enough he'd spill the beans on what the Yakuza were doing in Singapore, maybe even get him to turn informer for the good guys, and they wanted someone with a winning personality to get through to him."

He laughed, turning to Alex. "So you sent me."

Ignoring Dean, Alex said, "Well, he was sitting around with nothing to do, so I ordered him to head out, make contact with the Singapore branch, check the guy out, and report back on his com-wallet."

"Wait." Clover held up a hand, a confused expression forming on her face. "You sent him out by himself? Didn't we do everything in teams of three?"

Dean laughed. Oscar sighed. Alex looked pained. "The spies work solo now. There's not enough people left for three-man teams. Patrick...after you were fired and Jerry died, Patrick slashed Spy Section's budget. By _a lot_ \- like, over ninety-five percent." She grimaced. "My first assignment as Head of Spies was firing five hundred people. It was...it wasn't easy. There's only thirty of us left, these days. Twenty-nine, without Dean."

Oscar nodded, the approval in his gesture contrasting dispassionately with Alex's sorrowful reminiscence. "Patrick has done some very good work at WOOHP. Much of that is operational, of course, but a lot of it is also administrative, pushing through some very vital reforms. He's gotten rid of many wasteful practices, personnel, and assets, like that ridiculous training facility on the private island, or that absurd cruise ship. He's saved WOOHP and the DPA quite a bit of money. The Assistant Secretary General is quite pleased." He looked like was going to say more, but at the sight of Alex, Dean, and Clover glaring at him in unison he sighed and waved a hand at them in surrender. "Continue, please, Dean."

Dean turned his gaze back to Clover, a mistiness entering his eyes, and he paused for a moment before he spoke again.

"So I went the next night - caught an outbound flight at Los Angeles International on Saturday, June 11th. Flew to Taiwan, then caught a transfer to Singapore, arrived on Sunday the 12th, with the time difference. I had a WOOHP credit card with ten thousand dollars for operational funds, my com-wallet, a Laser Fountain Pen, a Fountain Pen Microphone, and some sticks of Chewable Glueable Tracking Gum. And my passport, of course. The Head Manager of the Singapore branch picked me up at the airport - Duffy Lechanteur. You know him?"

Clover shook her head. "Good for you. He was an idiot," Dean said.

"Patrick Alister appointed him," Alex said darkly. "That might have had something to do with it."

" _Was_?" Clover frowned. A sick feeling began creeping into her gut as she contemplated the implications of Dean's choice of diction.

For a moment, both Alex and Dean stilled, before Dean tried to continue, as if she hadn't spoken. Lechanteur had briefed him, he said, and given him a report of everything his agents had been able to observe from about a week of surveillance.

"This Yakuza's name was Kazuma. He was in his early thirties, a small-time crook from what we knew - Alex has the file. Assault, robbery, things like that - nothing too bad on his record. Did some time in prison, and when he got out he went right back to the Yakuza, though the Japanese police never caught him doing anything criminal. He'd been in town for five days, and his tour group was booked for nine more, which gave me just over a week to charm him into fielding for WOOHP and snitching on his Yakuza buddies."

Dean chuckled. "Kazuma was...he had a lot of stamina, let me tell you. He'd been drinking and doping every night without a break. Lechanteur's agents were exhausted from chasing him around town into the morning. During the days he and his Yakuza friends split off from the rest of the tour group, and either went sightseeing on their own or went into the shadier parts of town to meet with some of the local triad bosses, though neither Singapore police nor the local WOOHP agents had any cause to arrest them. During the evenings, though - that was my chance. He'd head back to his hotel, the Swissotel on Stamford Road, where he'd have dinner with his crew, and around nine he'd head out on his own, taking the metro up to the shopping centers on Orchard Road, where he'd go to clubs for a few hours, usually until midnight. Then he'd take a taxi to the Marina Bay Sands, this super-swanky casino hotel overlooking the bay, where he'd find more clubs and get wasted or high, usually with some girls he'd picked up there."

"He'd only been in Singapore for five days, but it was long enough for him to settle into a routine. On Orchard Road, his favorite place was the Sparrow's Nest, and at the Sands he'd head to this bar underneath the shopping concourse called Angelina's. At each place he'd have around six or seven drinks - usually sake, but sometimes gin, just for variety. He'd pick up chicks at both places, but he never brought the ones from the Nest with him to the Sands. The agents managed to track one of them down and ask her a few questions. She said he was lonely and that whenever he wasn't drinking or shooting himself full of drugs he was complaining about his wife for not appreciating his brilliance or being grateful for his company. That was a real breakthrough," he added sarcastically.

Suddenly, Dean leaned forwards in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees, keeping his hands clasped together tightly in front of him. An almost mystical urgency swept over him, like he was making a confession of some kind.

"I spent Sunday and Monday night beating the jet lag, but on Tuesday I told the agents watching Kazuma to take the night off while I went down to the Sparrow's Nest with him. I followed Kazuma onto the metro, stayed out of sight, and it was pretty dark in the club so that even though I sat kind of close to him at the bar I was pretty well hidden. The music was way too loud, but my Fountain Pen Microphone let me eavesdrop on what he was saying. He had two girls with him, a blonde and an Asian. The blonde kept quiet and just nodded along, the Asian talked to him a lot, in English. It was a lot of flirty stuff, the usual pretty lies, nothing I haven't heard - or used - before," Dean chuckled, oblivious to Alex's angry eyes boring a hole into the side of his head. "Right around midnight the party breaks up. Kazuma tells his girls he's got a big day tomorrow so he's got to go home, which was another lie. So while he's paying for their drinks I run out of there and hail a cab, to try and beat him to the Marina Bay Sands. By this point, I'm already getting suspicious, but it's not until after he comes to Angelina's that I'm convinced I'm barking up the wrong tree."

At Clover's urging, Dean began listing off his reasons, one long finger after another. First, he wondered why Kazuma would rather go out alone than party with his criminal friends - the more the merrier, after all, and by the looks of it he and the rest of the Yakuza he was traveling with got along pretty well. Second, he was amazed at how casually and indifferently he threw his money around - there were _way_ too many high-denomination bills passing around for a small-fry pusher like him.

"And three, I didn't...there was something about the way he lied. He was too smooth about it. Even for a guy like me, he was _cold._ " Dean smiled ruefully, and Alex's glare became a few orders of magnitude more intense. Clover began to wonder if there was some history between them she didn't know about, something that happened after she left WOOHP.

It was at Angelina's where Dean's suspicions were confirmed. "He was sitting alone this time, shooed off the girls who tried to come to his table. Being by himself, I had an opportunity to study him, like _really_ study him, you know?" Dean confided. "That's when I saw all the little things about him that I hadn't seen before, that the agents hadn't noticed."

There was the bulge in his jacket, under his left armpit. The tattoos that peeked out from under his cuffs or behind his collar every now and then, as he puffed on his cigarette and poured himself glass after glass of sake. The sharpness of his eyes, still sweeping the room, though they were increasingly dulled by alcohol. Finally, there was where he sat: on a second floor balcony, at a corner table close to a fire escape and a stairway, his left side covered by a wall (he was right-handed) and a bird's eye view of the main entrance and the dance floor below him.

"I realized then that everything in Kazuma's file, everything Alex and Duffy had briefed me on, was garbage. This was no friendly neighborhood crook. Kazuma was a pro."

Dean leaned back on the sofa. His voice took on a defensive tone.

"Alright, now look. It's one thing to try and make friends with a little-league amateur bad guy, but with all his tattoos and his gun and everything, Kazuma could have been a hitman or something for all I knew. _Way_ out of my league. No way was I going to mess with a guy as dangerous as him."

"So what did you do?" Clover asked.

"I ran out of there as fast as I could and waited around for a cab. I called Alex on my com-wallet, but she wasn't there, so I just sent her a text message. 'No Sale'. Called Duffy Lechanteur right after. He was awake, and I told him the same thing I told Alex. He sounded disappointed, but he wished me a safe flight home, which was nice of him, I guess."

"That's it? You just gave up like that? You didn't try and figure out what he was up to or anything?" The dormant Head of Spies instincts in Clover were being reawakened from their long burial, and to her surprise she found herself disapproving of how quickly Dean decided to bail.

"Like I said, I was there to turn Kazuma the small-time gangster into an informer. Turning Kazuma the S-rank enforcer wasn't my mission. It's not like the old days, Clover," Dean said, crossing his arms. "Nowadays just _one_ of the bad guys we run into can be more dangerous than a dozen Terrences or Geraldine Husks - _they_ , at least, never packed any heat. Besides, these days, spies are told to stay out of trouble whenever they can, not to take too many risks, and in my case it seemed like a good idea."

"New policy from Central Command," Alex explained. "Blaine's orders. With so few spies on the roster he told me I should keep a closer eye on them, keep them out of dangerous situations if I didn't want any manpower shortages. If any of them got hurt or...killed...he said Patrick would make it hard to replace them."

Dean nodded, falling silent with an air of grimness and conclusion. Intuitively, however, Clover could sense Dean had a lot more to say. His normally-cheerful face had grown more serious, but also more eager, and he was tapping a finger idly against his thigh. "What did you do next?"

Dean grinned, a little sheepishly. "Well, that was Tuesday night. My flight back didn't leave until Thursday, so I figured I had some time to kill. I went shopping, bought some clothes, ate some food. Then, on Wednesday night, I got bored, so I figured I should at least _try_ and figure out what he and his pals were up to in Singapore. So, being the good little WOOHP spy I am, I went and broke into his room."

"At his hotel? How did you know what room he was in?"

The Chewable Glueable Tracking Gum, Dean said. On the night he'd been following Kazuma around he'd arrived at Angelina's before him, and took some time to chew and spit a gob of gum in the doorway, which his target had been kind enough to step on as he came in. "I tracked him on my com-wallet, figured out he was on the 38th floor of the Stamford, room 3812. It had a window view, which was great for me, since I could use my Expandable Cable Bungee Belt to climb straight up to the balcony. So I waited until he left for his nine o'clock adventures, then threw on my catsuit and went up." He laughed. "It took a _long_ time, and the balconies were kind of unsafe. But the locks on the window-doors - they give up as soon as they see the Fountain Pen Laser, you know?"

And that, he concluded, was how he found himself in Kazuma's hotel room, waiting for his vision to adjust to the dark. He was planning on going through the drawers, then his luggage, and at the end he'd celebrate by helping himself to the expensive snacks and drinks in the minifridge. He was just about to start, too, when a woman's voice called out to him from the bed, moaning drowsily in Japanese.

"Kazuma's wife," Dean explained. "Saki. Alex has the file." He looked wistful for a moment, while Alex dropped her silent, impassive scowl and settled into a state of subdued inscrutability. Oscar fought to suppress a yawn.

"This," Dean said, "was when it all began."


	10. Part One: Chapter Four

**Author's Note:** My apologies for my extended absence.

 **Content Warning:** Adult language

* * *

 ** _Part One: Dean's Mission  
_**

 ** _IV_**

* * *

Oscar got up from his seat and began walking off to the side of the room, which annoyed Clover because it interrupted Dean's story just as it was starting to get interesting. Picking up a pitcher of water, he poured himself a glass before looking back over his shoulder. "Would you like a drink, Clover? Water? Soda?" He turned back around and took a sip. "Something stronger, perhaps? I have many fine wines from the Napa Valley, and plenty of other spirits as well. It's the winter, after all - a drink never did anyone any harm."

To be honest Clover would have liked a noncaf latte or something, but in the face of Oscar's aggressive hospitality, like that of an aged grandparent spoiling a distant but beloved grandchild, she felt unable to ask, and she politely declined. Undeterred, he turned to Alex, who also couldn't accept a drink from Goodluck. Dean didn't get offered anything, and when Oscar had returned to his seat he picked up where he left off.

"Now, in the movies this is the time where I pull out a gun or put my hand over her mouth or something. But I didn't think I could scare her with a fountain pen, and - well," he chuckled, a self-satisfied grin on his face, "honestly, I don't know how I got her to stay quiet. I mean, I remember the words I said, the things I did," he added quickly, "just not - I don't know _how_ I knew to say them and do them. Whatever happened, whatever it was, it was some of the quickest, _smoothest_ talking I ever did in my life."

* * *

 _"Kazuma? Kazuma?"  
_

Oh, sh...oot _, thought Dean, his head spinning in alarm towards the shifting mass of blankets on the bed. Until it started moving and mumbling Japanese in a sleepy, feminine voice, he'd thought it was just that - a messy pile of blankets, nothing more, left behind by your typical messy, dirty, gross bad guy after his afternoon nap. He never considered that there could be someone under it - certainly not a girl. As far as he and the agents could tell, Kazuma didn't bring the girls he picked up back to his room, which made this girl's presence all the more inexplicable.  
_

Who the heck is she? What's she doing in the bed of a cold-blooded Yakuza?

 _His musings were cut short, however, as the girl staggered out of bed, and though he wasn't_ trying _to check her out he found his eyes running over her of their own volition. She was wearing a loose satin nightgown tinted a fetching shade of blue that Dean couldn't help but feel attracted to, despite his state of surprise and panic. Her dark black hair was messy and tangled -_ a worse case of bedhead I haven't seen _, he decided, which was entirely untrue - but even in disarray, in the dark, he could tell that once properly brushed and combed it would look quite becoming indeed, not the careless over-long bangs of an adolescent pop-star wannabe but something sleek and genuinely refined._ _Her face, though - that part was still shrouded in darkness and hidden behind rogue strands of hair, and despite himself Dean felt a gentle curiosity well within him, desiring to see her face and look into her eyes and know what lay within._

 _"Kazuma?" She repeated, turning to Dean in confusion, blinking rapidly, her eyes bleary from sleep._

 _With that one name, she snapped him out of his admiring trance and forced him back into the present, and suddenly a hundred different sirens went off in his head all at once. His fight-or-flight instinct, manifesting itself as a sudden urge to scream and run and leap out the window, seized hold of him violently, shaking him to his utmost core, for reasons that he was immediately and terribly aware of. He had been spotted, for one. He was still in his catsuit, for two. And three - well, he had absolutely no idea whatsoever what he should do. He couldn't even think about it for the voices in his head, screaming at him about how this woman was going to blow his cover, how she would tell Kazuma, how the Yakuza would know that WOOHP was on to them and then everything would fall apart and the Singapore branch would be very angry with him for messing up their surveillance and Alex would be upset - and oh, he didn't want to make Alex upset, not when he'd promised to take her out when he got back! - and Blaine would get mad and say he was a lousy spy and Patrick would frown cruelly and give him the axe like he did Clover and Britney and The Brain and all the other spies -_

 _In his thoughtless panic, his restraint deserted him entirely and profanities poured across his mind in a foul flood._ Oh fuck, oh fuck, ohfuckohfuckohfuck-

 _Looking around wildly, his heart threatening to explode in his chest, his fists clenching and unclenching in rapid succession, he saw the light switch on the wall and for no reason at all he decided to flip it._ NO DON'T _his better judgment screamed at him, deafening his thoughts, and his arm shook fiercely as his last-minute hesitation threatened to override his impulse, but it was too late. His finger made contact, the switch flipped upwards with a forbidding_ click _, and bright light filled the room, banishing the darkness and exposing Dean for all the world to see._

That's it, _the voice in his head said disapprovingly._ You've done it now, you big dummy. _With grim resignation, he waited for her to scream, his heart skipping a beat in fear._

 _But to his immense surprise, she did not scream. The light blinded her momentarily, and she turned away from him, holding her hands to her eyes to keep out the searing brightness. Without thinking, and with a speed he did not know he had - did not even think possible - he grabbed his com-wallet from his belt and hurriedly pressed one of the buttons, jabbing his finger like a sword, with so much force that for a brief moment he feared he had broken his device._

 _A beam of brilliant, blue-white light shot out of a lens and traveled the length of his body, and by the time the girl had adjusted to the light and turned back around Dean the catsuited spy was no more. In his place was Dean the...tourist? Businessman? Playboy? Yes, playboy, he decided. In his place was Dean the playboy, sharply dressed in a crisp white suit and blue-green shirt, having just broken into this poor lady's hotel room like some creep, albeit a really spiffy one._

 _"Good question, lady. Where_ is _Kazuma?" He heard himself say, affecting a cross tone that he didn't feel but surprised him for how authentic it sounded._

 _Not waiting for her reply, his heart still hammering in his chest, he turned around abruptly and rudely and stalked around the room, back hunched, fists clenched, his eyes scanning left and right. He took his cue from his own actions, and decided that playing angry was the way to go._

But angry about what? _He asked himself, as he opened the bathroom door and peered at nothing in particular inside. He wasn't a stranger to making things up as he went along, but usually he did it to get_ into _girls' arms - and their pants - not to...do whatever the hell he was doing now. The stories and lies that popped into his head seemed all outlandish and unbelievable, but if he stayed quiet any longer he was afraid his panic would get the better of him, so at random he picked one and forced the words out of his mouth._

 _"This_ is _his room, right?" He asked, in the same brusque, slightly mean voice he used earlier. He paced about a little more, pretending to look for something - or someone - his mind working feverishly to refine his story as he did so. He paused at the room's desk and sat on it, throwing one leg onto the desk casually and looking at the girl with an annoyed, but also slightly apologetic expression on his face. To stall for time to create his lie, he decided to tell the truth._

 _"Now believe me, lady, I'm sorry if I've scared you and I mean you no harm, honest." He hopped off the table and began moving again, this time away from the woman and towards the window he came in from, fearing that if he stayed still she'd be able to see through him. "You caught me by surprise, let me tell you that. I wasn't expecting a girl here, just Kazuma."_

 _He watched her reflection in the window. Her body was tense and rigid, like she was gearing for a fight, but one look at her tiny hands, clenched into similarly-tiny fists, made her look so absurd that Dean at once knew she posed no danger to him. Her face was now basked in light, and now that he had a good look at it Dean thought that she was kind of cute, in a curious way - petite, but also sharp, mature and kind of tough, though at the moment her delicate features were distorted by the furious glare that she wore. It occurred to him that for all he knew she didn't understand a lick of what he was saying, so it came to him as no small relief when she replied, in cold, haughty English, "I'm his wife."_

 _"Is that so?" He asked, deliberately disinterestedly, not bothering to turn around but discreetly keeping an eye on her reflection in the window. A pile of luggage sat by the wall and he moved to go through it, flipping through the clothes inside distractedly. "Now look, I don't want to upset you-"  
_

 _"What are you doing? Does my husband know you?"_

 _Dean turned around, pushing an exasperated sigh out of his lungs, and began walking towards her, putting menace into his posture and his movement but restraining himself, for fear of pushing her too far. "No point beating around the bush," he said bluntly, as he made his way right up to her. He was taller than she by a good few inches and peered down sternly into her eyes, putting his hands on his hips for added effect. "Well it's this way: your Kazuma swooped my damn girl tonight. And if that wasn't enough of a dick move by itself he'd also been drinking on my tab."_

 _The story sounded good, and just hearing the words tumble out of his mouth made him feel more confident, to the point where he felt so pleased with himself he had to fight to keep a grin off his face. "So," he continued, keeping the roughness in his voice, "I thought I'd come up here and teach that jerk a lesson." He turned away, holding up a hand briefly to wave off a protest that never came. "Sorry, but that's the way it is."_

 _Having made his pitch, he felt a wave of relief come crashing down on him, and like a drowning man crawling his way onto shore he sank into a nearby armchair, folded his hands contentedly over his stomach, and let the repressed smile loose at last. "Thanks for not screaming your head off, by the way," he said, letting an honest sweetness enter his words._

 _The girl watched him coldly, judging him. She walked slowly towards him until she loomed over him in his chair, and opened her mouth to speak, though no words came out. Looking up at her, Dean could visibly see the tension evaporate from her body and her face relax from the scowl it had been holding, and he felt his confidence surge. He was getting through to her; she was buying what he said._

 _"How did you get in?" She managed at last._

 _"Room service will do anything for the right amount of money," he smirked, while fervently hoping she didn't notice the hand-sized hole in the window, right above the lock, that he'd cut with his Laser Fountain Pen._

 _He watched as she weighed the answer and found it satisfactory. Tucking a strand of raven-black hair behind her ear, she looked down at him arrogantly, a disdainful sneer playing at her lips._

 _"You should be careful what you say about my husband," she said matter-of-factly, looking away from him suddenly, avoiding his gaze. "He is an important man. He...has powerful friends."_

 _Dean raised an eyebrow, accepting the challenge. "Really? You trying to scare me off, Mrs. Kazuma? I've got a rep for taking care of myself, you know. I'm your original American self-made success story!"_

 _As badly as it had started, Dean found that he was quite enjoying himself now, as he successfully took control and salvaged the situation with his grandiose deceptions, honed from years of flirtation and flings. "Rags to riches and all that junk," he continued, shifting in his seat to face her better. "Takes a lot more than a girl-stealing alcoholic to scare me. Not even the creepy Japanese kind."  
_

 _"Don't call me Mrs. Kazuma," she snapped distractedly, looking out the window now. She stepped slowly towards it, placing her back to him, and Dean managed to stop his eyes from falling all the way down. "My name is Saki."_

 _"Tom Lyman. Pleased to meet ya."_

 _The girl - Saki? Was that it? - turned around, a dark, knowing look on her face. "Are you?" She asked, raising a mocking eyebrow, and Dean was genuinely confused as to which of his statements - the fake name he'd thought of on the spot, or the polite expression of pleasure - she was questioning._

 _He decided to go with the name. "Yeah, Tom Lyman. You just drop that name in LA," she perked up at that, "and you'll get a dozen people showing you the way to my company. I run a startup working with water recycling - save the planet, you know?"_

 _Saki began to pace the room, a strangely pleased expression on her face. A silence descended upon them, which Dean broke. He was feeling a lot more comfortable now, and try as he might, he couldn't resist a little masculine one-upmanship, even if it was all fake. "You know, if_ I _was Kazuma, I wouldn't go out at night stealing other guys' women. Wouldn't feel the need," he said, boyishly and just a little arrogantly.  
_

 _"Kazuma is Kazuma," she said finally, after a long silence, turning to face him, her face impenetrable and inexpressive like a mask. She walked right in front of him, so close their knees were almost touching, and for a moment the mask slipped, and the corners of her lips turned upwards in a subtle, almost imperceptible smile. "And Tom Lyman...is someone else."_

* * *

He had started expecting to be exposed and chased out of Singapore with the Yakuza hot on his heels. He had ended with a promise to meet again the next night, in order to get to know each other better.

"Now, if you remember, Thursday night was when I was supposed to catch my flight back to LA, but I thought that this was more important. So as soon as I got back to my hotel I cancelled my flight, and turned off the transponder beacon on my com-wallet too, for good measure. I didn't want any nosy WOOHP agents to go looking for me and crash my date with Saki."

Clover's eyes widened. "Did you tell Alex?"

Alex scoffed. Dean shook his head. "No," he said, a little defiantly. "I was pretty sure Alex would just tell me to come home. Part of that was our date, of course, but it was also-"

"Dean can't be trusted around women," Alex cut in. "Especially if they're cute, vulnerable, and bad guys. You remember, Clover? That time he and his team chased that mad scientist in Switzerland? He _totally_ fell for the mad scientist's daughter! He thought she was innocent and could be saved, and you remember what happened? She lured him into a trap, and his team had to come save him!"

Clover did remember it; sending Dean and his team out to stop Professor von Fries and his daughter/accomplice from triggering avalanches to destroy mountain lodges in order to save the Alps' biodiversity from human interference - a typically convoluted evil plan if she ever saw one - was one of the first missions she'd managed after she'd been made Head of Spies, almost two years ago now. Abruptly, she felt surprised at how vividly she was able to recall a memory that she thought was long buried, followed by a wave of pleasant, romantic nostalgia. It helped that that mission was, all things considered, pretty light-hearted and low-stakes, like the ones she went on before her promotion, instead of the more normal, mundane, and nonsensically terrifying missions she supervised in the last months of her WOOHP career. With an indulgent smile, she said equably, "Well, it worked out alright. We got both of them in the end, didn't we?"

Dean smiled too. "You've always been really understanding, Clover. Thanks." Shooting a meaningful look at Alex, he continued, "But in this case, I couldn't count on Alex to see things the same way. So, instead of getting into an argument with my boss, I decided just...not to tell her."

"I waited at the airport to pick him up," Alex growled. "For _three_ hours."

"Like I said, I'm sorry I missed our date, and I'm sorry I kept you out of the loop. But I thought - I thought that if I could get close to Saki, you know, maybe get her to become an informer instead of her husband...well, it would make up for everything. Once I got through to her in her hotel room, I saw my chance to make this mission work, to turn the situation around and get something useful out of it." Dean was speaking earnestly now, full of noble and serious conviction, and Clover felt herself lean forward into his voice. "Honestly, I was a little bummed that Kazuma didn't work out, and I didn't like the idea of coming back to WOOHP with nothing to show for it but some new clothes and souvenirs. So when Saki offered to see me the next night, when she gave me an opportunity, I took it. Look, I know I come off as kind of a player sometimes, but I take my job seriously. And this was one of the times when you have to break the rules in order to get the job done."

Oscar snorted. "Ask Jerry how well that worked for him," he muttered, studying the water in his glass. Clover felt her cheeks color, and with great self-control she fought off the urge to turn and glare at him.

"Did you tell - what's his name - Duffy, at least?" She asked.

"Heck no. He was going to rat me out to WOOHP for sure. Like I said, he was an idiot. Totally by-the-book. If I didn't think I could convince Alex that my adventure with Saki was a good idea, then no way would I ever have convinced Duffy."

Clover considered that. Having never met this Duffy guy, she decided to take his word for it. "So let me get this straight," she said, just for herself, "you didn't tell _anyone_ about this Saki girl? Nobody knew what you were up to, or where you were?"

"Nope," Alex answered for him. "It was like he vanished into thin air. He broke every rule in the book. When Central Command found out he was missing, they got _super_ mad, and sent me dozens of really mean e-mails and phone calls all asking where Dean was and how the heck I lost track of him. Blaine even called me into his office to yell at me about letting one of my spies disappear so easily. He said I was careless and clueless, and that it was like Sam and Operation Impeachment all over again - and when he starts talking about Sam, you _know_ he's mad, since that's a really sore subject for him. And I had to stand there and take all of it," she said, gritting her teeth at the painful, humiliating memory, before turning to Dean with acid in her eyes. "And if I knew that while this was happening, _you_ were taking some gangster girl on a date..." Her voice trailed off into an inarticulate snarl.

For his part, Dean managed to look sincerely remorseful. "Sorry. I didn't know, alright? But it's like I told you - I had an opportunity here, a chance to finish a mission I thought was already failed. If disappearing and dropping off the grid was the price to pay for knowing what the Yakuza were up to, then fine. I was sure that it would all be worth it in the end, and maybe even more, if I could just get her to open up to me. She wasn't like that villain in Switzerland, Clover, honest. I could tell. If she wanted she could have screamed and brought every Yakuza on the floor - heck, everybody in the hotel - down on me, right then and there, but she didn't. She had a reason for that - she had plans for me. And I had plans for her."

* * *

 _The match hissed and a tiny flame winked to life, flickering uncertainly against the surrounding darkness as Saki touched it to the end of her cigarette. Shaking it out, she tossed the charred, smoking stick onto the table and took a few shallow puffs from her cigarette, fixing her studiously blank gaze on the vine patterns on the tablecloth and refusing to meet Dean's eyes. Smoke drifted lazily towards the ceiling, weaving vague, shapeless patterns before dissipating. Some of it blew his way, and he coughed in annoyance. He had a thing about not dating girls who smoked, and times like these reminded him why._ The things I do for WOOHP...

 _The waiter made his way to their table, winding through the darkened, crowded restaurant, and set two tiny glasses down on the table and poured splashes of sake into each, before setting the bottle down, nodding stiffly, and disappearing as quickly as he came. Dean had had no idea what she wanted to drink, but Kazuma favored sake, so it wasn't too far of a stretch to imagine Saki might too._

Sake. Saki. Heh. _Dean smiled at the punny coincidence. His grin faded, however, as he noticed the aimless, restless way she held her glass, swirling the clear fluid around and around again, before finally gulping it down without even clinking glasses with him first. Her eyes seemed unfocused and distracted, her mouth partly open and unsure, and her face and body tense, much like she'd been when they first met, but more so. Wordlessly, she reached out and grabbed the sake bottle with what seemed to Dean like a gratuitous amount of force, and in the span of a few heartbeats she'd poured herself another shot and downed it. Dean's own glass sat in front of him, untouched._

 _"You sure you don't want something stronger?" He asked, before silently cursing his choice of words. He sounded like a jerk frat boy trying to take advantage of a pretty girl he'd just met - which, to be fair, described his current situation pretty accurately, except that he wasn't a jerk frat boy and that his idea of taking advantage involved a lot less kissing (_ which is a good thing, _he thought,_ given how she smokes _) and a lot more talking. "You look like it could help. Hey, don't misunderstand me here - you look great, Saki. Really lovely." He flashed her one of his most dazzling smiles, the kind that caused distracted driving accidents among female drivers and made young, naive teenage girls everywhere turn all shades of red. "Just thought it might help, you know? You look more spooked now than when I broke into your room last night. It's not me, is it?" He asked, only half sarcastically._

 _She puffed some more on her cigarette, still not daring to look at him. "I-I'm not supposed to be doing this," she whispered, so softly that Dean almost didn't hear. He was struck by the change that had swept over her in the past twenty-four hours. Gone was the snobby, condescending ice queen of the night before. In her place was...just a normal girl, alone and afraid, and just the image of her, shyly avoiding his gaze, cigarette dangling loosely from her fingers, her face framed in shadow and smoke, touched a chivalrous chord inside his heart, and he felt an immense urge to reach out and hold her in his arms, to shield her from everything that might wish her harm._

 _"Do what?" He asked, gently. He was going to have to coax it out of her, he realized, one step at a time._ This is gonna be a _real_ long game.

 _"Go out by myself. Meet people. Talk to people without permission. I'm not allowed to do that." Her eyes finally flickered upwards and met his, allowing Dean a good look at the sheer terror contained within._

 _He tried his best to be casual and reassuring. "Why? What's the matter? We're just two strangers in a romantic restaurant in a foreign country, getting to know each other better. Nothing wrong about that," he said, grinning breezily and leaning back in his chair. He decided to take a sip from his own glass of sake, hoping that if he seemed unconcerned, it would rub off on her too.  
_

 _On the other side of the restaurant, the in-house jazz band started a new song, something fast and hip and utterly loathsome to Dean, who much preferred hip-hop. Saki seemed to take courage in it, however - she pulled on her cigarette a little less frequently and though she refilled her sake glass she didn't drink it down. The muscles in her face, drawn tight over her pale, delicate features, loosened slightly as she smiled for the first time since he'd met her. It was an unsteady, fearful smile, but Dean was at once drawn by how innocent and pretty it looked, and before she had even started speaking he was already leaning forwards in his seat._

 _"I do special work," she said, confiding in him as if he were a priest at a confessional. "I'm a lawyer, by trade. Corporate law, for a very respected firm in Osaka."_

 _"Corporate law?" It sounded boring, but Dean feigned interest, hoping to keep her talking._

 _"The senior partner at my firm is son-in-law to the chairman of one of the great Yakuza clans. He takes many of the top lawyers and presses them into service for the clan's activities. Some of them represent the Yakuza's interests in the courts, while still others..." She trailed off for a moment, before laughing bitterly. "It's been years since I filed a brief or wrote a report. I don't work in the office anymore. Now, I am asked - told - to perform...more criminal tasks. I am a Yakuza in my own right, though not at all by choice." Then, as an afterthought, she added, "So is my husband - although, for him, it_ is _his choice. But you already know about him, don't you?"_

 _She paused, taking a long drag on her cigarette, before continuing, "I hate it, Tom. Can't do it." She stubbed out her almost-finished cigarette in an ashtray. "I want to escape from it."_

 _Suddenly she was all over him, leaning over the table, clutching at his arm with both hands, speaking with an urgent desperation in her voice. "It's like a prison. I-I want to be_ free _. I need someone to help me - I need_ you _, Tom. I think you can be brave. You're a hero, I can tell. A policeman, or even a secret agent, maybe."_

 _Abruptly, she laughed, as if she was playing a joke on him, and withdrew her hands from his arm. Dean laughed too, though uncomfortably, and privately he wondered what the hell she was trying to say, and whether or not she knew who and what he really was. "I'm-I'm just a businessman," he said at last, remembering the cover he'd created for himself the previous night. "I'm not a cop, or whatever you think I am. I don't know anything about being a hero."_

 _Saki only looked at him coyly, and struck another match to light another cigarette. "Of course you don't," she murmured, a knowing smile playing at her lips as wisps of smoke escaped her mouth._

* * *

They met again the next day, this time during the late morning. Kazuma and the other Yakuza were off to meet some local Triad bosses, Saki had told him, while she had feigned sickness and stayed behind at the Swissotel.

"We took the cable car to Sentosa Island - a beautiful place, you know? _Really_ great beaches. They have a Universal Studios park there, too, and a bunch of other stuff. It's really lit. There were tourists crawling all over the place. Made it easy to blend in."

"If I wanted to know what it was like I would Google it," Alex snapped. "Get on with it."

Dean shot Alex a look that, while not exactly hostile, contained a forceful and fierce meaning within. "Hey. My story, my way of telling it, alright? So go easy on the third degree." Sensing her impatience - and, across from him, Oscar's boredom - he added, "It's not my fault she wanted to play her cards close to her chest, ok? Besides, I didn't want to pressure her. I could have scared her off, and then," he grinned, "I wouldn't be here."

Neither Alex nor Oscar looked too upset by that possibility. Neither of them looked like they were listening at all, in fact - Alex was scrolling through her smartphone, while Oscar was staring blankly at a wall on the other side of the room, behind Dean. Only Clover remained, listening with rapt attention at the story of Dean's adventure, enthralled and, despite herself, triggered to a sentimental reminiscence of and longing for for the happy days of high school and college once again.

"What happened next?"


	11. Part One: Chapter Five

**Author's** **Note:** Again, sorry for the long absence. Also, things are looking pretty rough for me for basically the rest of March, all of April, and the first half of May, so don't expect much in the way of regular updates until around June or so.

I list the status of this story on my profile, under "Current Projects", so in the future consult my profile to see whether this story is On Hiatus or In Progress.

One of these days I'll learn how to write decent, tasteful, plot-integrated smut. Not today, though.

Sorry if my writing in this chapter is...weird. I wrote this over the course of several _very_ early mornings, and was much too tired to think, much less write, coherently.

For those of you who are getting tired of Dean's flashbacks, relax, the next chapter will be the last we see of Dean for a while (I think). Everything after that will be Clover, Alex, and lowkey Dina and Oscar working the case, interspersed with the occasional Sam, still hiding out and teaching at Tuesbad.

 **Content Warning:** Adult language, indirect sexual themes

* * *

 ** _Part One: Dean's Mission_**

 ** _V_**

* * *

 _The tides rolled in, and out, and then in again, lapping gently on the sand that gave way beneath their shoes. Around them, pleasure-seekers of all ages and origins frolicked on the beach, laughing and shouting and filling the air with mirth and cheerfulness. Somewhere off in the distance a group of party-goers was hosting a barbecue, and the delectable, savory smell of their meat as it cooked on the grill, carried to them by a light ocean breeze, made Dean's mouth water._

 _He turned around to look at Saki walking beside him. She was staring off at the ocean in the distance, hands clasped primly in front of her, her long, wavy hair tied back into a thick ponytail that hung off the back of her head in a careless, innocently cute way. Her eyes weren't visible to him, hidden as they were beneath a shaded visor, but she had a contemplative smile on her face. It occurred to Dean that he liked her this way: relaxed, carefree - almost happy, even, though he knew better than to think that._

 _"You couldn't have fooled me for long, you know," she said, a playful lilt in her voice. "Isn't there an expression in English? 'It takes one to know one'?"_

 _For a brief, stupid moment Dean had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. "What do you mean?" He asked, before it suddenly dawned on him, and his jaw dropped a just a little in monumental realization._

 _"Even if I hadn't found the hole in the window you cut with your laser - it_ was _a laser, wasn't it? Nothing else could cut so cleanly and so quietly as not to wake me, which raises some interesting questions about how a businessman in...water recycling...could afford such cutting-edge equipment, not to mention how you got onto my balcony to begin with." She continued musing in silence for a few more steps, her lips pursed in light contemplation, before shaking her head and looking at him, her eyes narrowed in a penetrating, yet sympathetic look, one that told of a shared understanding and a common purpose in life._

 _"But anyways," she went on, "even if I hadn't found the hole, the way you carry yourself would have given you away before long. Poised, alert," her eyes traced his form, and Dean felt at once both self-conscious and proud, "yet with a pretended air of informality and nonchalance...you're like Kazuma, in some ways."_

 _Dean was impressed with her comfortable command of English, rather more poetic than he'd expect from a Japanese girl, but he rankled at being compared to Kazuma, for some reason. "I'm not a crook, or an assassin, or whatever the heck your husband is," he said, a little defensively._

 _Saki bobbed her head, making a show of dumb, simple agreement that belied the conspiratorial bent of her thoughts. "No, you're not," she said equably. "You're not cruel. Not cold. Not violent. You're not a criminal. Not a thief. A bully. Nor are you a liar - at least, not in the ways that matter."_

 _She stopped and placed a hand on his arm, holding him in place, before turning to face him. "So what are you, Tom? Interpol? FBI? DEA? Strange to see an American agent in Singapore, so far away from your traditional operating spaces. But you_ are _an agent, that much I know. You're like Kazuma in that way. Or me, even. A man with a mission,_ " _she said, a smile dancing on her lips._

 _She looked at him, looked through him, with such an overwhelming thoroughness to her searching, innocent gaze that it took all of Dean's self-control to hold the truth inside of him for just a little bit longer. Was there any harm in telling her? Could he trust her? That was the question - trust. If he told her, could he count on her to not snitch on him to her husband and the rest of his Yakuza friends?_

She didn't rat you out before _, one part of him said._

But maybe it's because she was playing you _, countered another._ Maybe this is all a trick - maybe, just as you're trying to get her to talk, she's trying to get you to do the same.

 _Inwardly, Dean's mind revolted at the thought. He was no stranger to petty lies, having used them to score dozens of chicks in the past. Nor was he a stranger to deeper, more serious deceptions - his undercover assignment against Terrence came readily to mind. But there was a point, however, when the lies and the stakes behind them grew so large and twisted that words like "deep" and "serious" became too frail, too inadequate to describe how nauseatingly disgusting and cruel they were. Conspiracy and drama were things he loathed; their assumptions of ugly duplicity and ulterior motives contradicted too painfully his earnest belief in the innocence, simplicity, and relative honesty of the motives of others. It ruined everything he liked about people, and he had no desire to let it get in the way of his fledgling relationship -_ relationship? _\- with Saki._

 _In the meantime, she continued watching him, an inscrutable expression having settled on her face. A few heartbeats passed, and Dean felt he had to say_ something _, so he went with his first instincts and did that which seemed most comfortable, most natural to him. He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her into him as if in an embrace, not looking down at her but rather looking up around them, watching out for any passers-by who might overhear. When he was satisfied that they were safely far enough from any potential eavesdroppers, he leaned down, placing his mouth next to her left ear, and took a deep breath._

She already suspects. You don't have a lot left to lose.

 _"You're right. I'm a spy," he murmured softly. "I work for the World Organization of Human Protection. I was...I was..."_

 _Dean faltered almost as quickly as he began. He was pretty sure there wasn't any problem in telling her who he worked for, but a common-sense caution and wariness prevented him from telling her anything else - about his mission, for instance, or his real name. He hated plots and schemes and all the drama involved with them, but at the same time he wasn't totally sure he could trust her with the specifics of his presence in Singapore. Telling her that he worked with WOOHP was just about the only thing he was comfortable with revealing right now, given how she was getting pretty close the truth there anyways._

 _He withdrew his head and leaned backwards, trying to gauge her reaction. Whatever he had been expecting he hadn't been disappointed; a wide-eyed look of alarm had suddenly appeared on her face, and her mouth opened slightly, as if she was going to cry out. She grabbed at his hands, still planted on her shoulders, before releasing them again, and quickly school her features into a mask of grave, intense impassivity. A trace of fear, however, had crept into her eyes once again, a fear just as deep, if not deeper, than that which had lurked in her back at the restaurant the night before. It was profound enough to give even Dean pause for a moment, as he wondered what could be possibly so terrible about his working for WOOHP._

 _"You...you're from WOOHP?" She asked quietly, a soft tremor in her voice._

 _"Yeah. Why, what's the matter?"_

 _"It's nothing." It was something. "Later, maybe."_

 _She looked up at him, fixing his eyes with a worried gaze. "Have you...have you told anyone at WOOHP about me?"_

 _"No, not yet," Dean admitted, truthfully. "Why, Saki? What's wrong?"_

 _Saki turned away from him and walked off, slowly, without answering. An uneasy feeling rising in his gut, Dean followed at a distance, before she stopped for a moment, staring at the sea. He followed her gaze, but found nothing of interest, and taking a good look at her face he saw her chewing her lip in intense concentration, her fists clenched tightly by her sides. He started to say something, but thought better of it, and waited until she started walking again, away from the ocean and back towards the city._

* * *

"She clammed up after that," Dean said. "Well, kind of. She kept talking, but not about anything important. Just asked what WOOHP was like, why I worked for it. Talked about her life in Japan. She steered clear of anything having to do with the Yakuza or her husband, though, even when I asked. She kept saying she'd tell me later. So I set up another date with her - same time, when Kazuma and his friends would be out on the town. It was Saturday by this point, a week after I left LA, and still four days before she, Kazuma, and the Yakuza were scheduled to check out and head back home."

At this date, Dean continued, the very first thing Saki did was invite him in to her hotel room. At that point, Clover noticed, Dean started getting fuzzy on the details, while around her Alex fixed him with another acidic stare and Oscar sighed and stared up at the ceiling. To her great surprise, a blush began to bloom on Dean's face, and as he began stumbling and rushing his words it became clear to Clover that he was dancing delicately around a subject, trying hard not to bring something up. It didn't take her long to figure out what that might be, and with a cheeky grin she said, "Alright, Dean, we get it. Now let's skip past the juicy part and get to what you talked about _after_ you had sex."

She savored the way Dean's jaw dropped a little and the blush increased in intensity, so much so that for a moment she thought his head might burst into flames. Next to him, Alex laughed, a short, malicious bark, while Oscar sighed disapprovingly and went to refill his glass of water, a paternal hint of disdain in his gait.

"It's not - I didn't - She wasn't-" Embarrassed, anxious denials tumbled out of Dean's mouth, and for a moment he sputtered pathetically, which only increased Alex's pleasure and Oscar's distaste. Clover, however, simply sat through it patiently, her wide grin shrinking into just a simple, sympathetic curl of the lips. She did not begrudge him his fling, even if Oscar resented his unprofessionalism and Alex bore a grudge from being cheated on. Nor did she hold anything against Saki for inviting Dean into her bed after knowing him for only four days. Girls have needs, same as anyone else, and from the sound of it her husband was a real piece of work. She didn't fault her for Dean, who was probably the only person she'd met in a long time who showed her any sort of compassion, given her any sort of attention.

She waited for Dean to collect himself, the furious red draining from his face, before he cleared his throat and began again, with a brave attempt at stoicism. "Alright. So we fucked. I'm not gonna lie. And once again," he said, turning to Alex, "sorry if I hurt you. But it was for the mission, alright? I know it's a crappy excuse and sounds cheesy as hell, but when she offered...well, I thought that if she was going to offer that, she would be willing to offer a lot more after that. Useful knowledge." He paused for a moment, letting a profound silence settle, one that underscored his next words. "Her mission. The Yakuza's mission. And," he added, "who she and Kazuma really worked for."

* * *

 _"How long have you known Kazuma?"  
_

 _Dean leaned against looked out the window, squinting his eyes to block out the harsh glow of the afternoon sun. Beneath him, Singapore looked hectic and restless - pedestrians were scrambling about on the sidewalks 400 feet below, cars, buses, and trucks honked at each other and jammed up the streets, and even the ships lying at anchor in the bay rocked back and forth as the unusually rough seas battered against their hulls. Somewhere out there, it occurred to him, Kazuma and his friends were wandering around, up to no good. They'd been up to no good for over a week now, and it was about damn time that Dean and WOOHP got some answers and learned what exactly they were doing, before they finished whatever their job was and flew back to Japan.  
_

 _"An office Christmas Party, six years ago." Soft footsteps sounded against the carpet as Saki joined him at the window, a bedsheet wrapped around her for modesty's sake, which Dean thought was strange, given that for the past hour or so the two of them had been decidedly immodest about their bodies. He, in particular, was still undressed, not seeing why he should feel embarrassed or self-conscious about himself - especially after the vigorous and, judging from the noises Saki had made, excellent performance he'd just given. But then again, Saki had always maintained something of a distance between herself and Dean - the cryptic conversations, the coy looks and gestures. It shouldn't have surprised him that that would extend to sex - or post-sex, anyways - as well._

 _Still, he thought, in the way that people do when they try to make sense out of the surreal, the very fact that they had fucked in the first place meant that she was able - and maybe even willing - to close that distance. Maybe it was her way of creating, or maybe finding, trust between them. If it was, he didn't mind - she was pretty good in bed. And, more importantly, it might mean she would be willing to open up now, in more ways than one, about the things that he and, by extension, WOOHP, would like to know._

 _Saki snaked an arm around his waist, and unconsciously he hung his over her shoulder. An image of Alex flickered briefly to life in his mind before he suppressed it, the thought vanishing like the closing of a book._

 _"I didn't think much of him at the time," she went on, joining him in staring at everything in general and nothing in particular. "He laughed too loudly, drank too much, was too forward with some of my friends. I had never seen him or his friends at the office before, so I wondered why my boss let them attend. It was only later, when everyone was about to leave, that my boss called Kazuma and me to see him in his office. That was when he told me that he and Kazuma were both Yakuza, that one of our senior partners had important connections with one of the great clans, and that over half the work we did at the firm was for them. It was my first time learning all of that," she said, in a slightly dazed voice. "He pointed to Kazuma, who was drunk, and told me that he was one of the clan's most trusted soldiers." She smiled. "I almost laughed. This drunkard, a gangster? He was barely conscious, his clothes were wrinkled, covered with crumbs, and stained from spilled food and drink. Once he almost fell out of his seat, before he caught himself on my boss' desk at the last second."_

 _Her smile lasted a few heartbeats before it slipped and fell from her face entirely. Something in her demeanor changed, and she clutched the bedsheet to her body more tightly. Dean didn't think she knew she was doing it._

 _"Then he looked at me - Kazuma, that is. He finally spoke, and when he did he spoke slowly, slurring his words so badly I thought I was talking to an idiot. He told me that the two of us were a team now, and that wherever he went I would have to follow. And if I refused, or went to the authorities..."_

 _A silence settled between the two of them as she petered out, but Dean got the message. "You would have a bad accident," he offered. "Slipped and fell off a balcony, something like that."_

 _Saki laughed, a mournful, ironic burst of mirth. "They wouldn't pretend," she said. "They would...they would..."_

 _She was trembling a little bit, Dean realized, and at once he saw the mistake he made and moved to correct it. "It's alright. I get it."_

 _They passed the next few moments in silence, listening to the sounds of traffic below, before she spoke again._

 _"We went to the courthouse the next week, to fill out the forms to register our marriage. It was good for cover, he said. It would give us a reason for me to travel with him, otherwise the police might become suspicious at two strangers, always on the same flights and ferries. A husband and wife would be more normal."_

 _"What does he do?" Dean asked. "What's his job within the Yakuza?"_

 _"Before we met he was an enforcer, used to punish the clan's enemies and ensure the loyalty of its clients. But after we were married he was assigned to special work, not for the clan, but for..." She paused for a minute, adjusting the bedsheet again, before tearing her gaze away from the window and looking at him directly. Her eyes were wide, and despite the softness with which she spoke there was a frantic look to them, the look of someone who has no idea where they're going but is maintaining their course and going full speed ahead anyways, consequences be damned._

 _"Have you heard of the ETOKA Syndicate, Tom?"_

 _Now it was Dean's turn to look away from the window. "ETOKA?" He asked, frowning. "Yeah, of course. They're WOOHP's number one enemy these days. Where do they come in?"_

 _The gears were working in his head as he spoke, and he had it all figured out by the time Saki responded, leaving him feeling a little stupid and embarrassed at his slowness, before his shame was gradually replaced by a small sense of dread as he realized he had broken another WOOHP rule._

 _"Kazuma works for them now. They are one of the clan's most important partners. They sell us arms and narcotics and help us smuggle contraband and launder our dirty money abroad. There are many prices for this partnership, but the one that impacts me the most is that the clan must loan manpower to them whenever they ask for it. Both Kazuma and I have been loaned to the Syndicate on-and-off ever since we were married. They send him abroad to find and blackmail businesspeople working for large firms that ETOKA has an interest in - something like a traveling recruiter, only for criminals. My job is to scout out the target, help Kazuma find - or create - incriminating information, and watch his back when he moves in to apply the blackmail."_

 _"That's why we are here in Singapore," she went on. "The Syndicate is looking to enter the financial market here, and Kazuma is here to find bankers to corrupt. But he, as you know, has other plans. He drinks," she said simply. "He chases the girls. He takes drugs. He has depressions. He goes on long walks to get away from me. And when ETOKA demands that he explains his failures he tells them it was just bad luck. There used to be a time he took his assignments seriously, but now he doesn't care as much - he only brings in four or five targets a year now, which he thinks is the bare minimum to satisfy our masters. I suppose he's going through a phase of some kind. When it started, I disapproved at first but," she chuckled, a little gratefully, "not anymore. It means that I don't have to do anything...unsavory. It means I have time to myself. Some privacy."_

 _"What about the other Yakuza here?" Dean asked, still feeling a little uncomfortable about his latest transgression. "Are they...on loan to ETOKA too?"_

 _"No. They are here on the clan's own business, sent to scout out locations for a narcotics smuggling operation they have with one of the local triads. Some of them are Kazuma's friends, so we decided to tag along."_

 _Dean processed all of this, and unbidden his thoughts turned to his com-wallet, still nestled inside his suit jacket, currently dumped unceremoniously on the floor. He really ought to call this in. Part of that was because of the new WOOHP policy he now realized he had violated - standing orders from Blaine, effective for all WOOHP agents and spies: at first sight of ETOKA personnel, abandon pursuit and report contact straight to Central Command. But the other part was...well...because...well, hell, this was gold Saki was telling him, pure gold, 24-carat, the whole reason behind his original mission. Kazuma was a dead-end, sure, but Saki was making up for it, and WOOHP really should know that he had a major lead here. But Alex - Blaine - Patrick - they were all probably absolutely furious at him back at WOOHP HQ for flaking on his flight and dropping off the grid, like a parent getting angry with an errant child for wandering off without permission. They would be even more pissed off if they knew he was hanging around a Syndicate crook against orders.  
_

 _Back in the day, Jerry would have been mad, too, if he went and broke the rules like he was doing now, but bringing back a breathing, talking, real-life ETOKA agent who wanted to turn good-guy would have earned him a pardon for his breach of protocol, and maybe even a discreet pat on the back too. These days, though, with self-righteous rules lawyers like Patrick and - it hurt him to say it - Blaine running the show, even that wasn't going to be enough. Central Command was staffed full of arrogant assholes who gave orders and circulated instructions, and took it as a personal insult when those orders and instructions weren't followed to the letter. To them, the sanctity of command - or, in other words, their own pride in bossing other people around - was more important than actually getting the job done.  
_

 _With that in mind, he was going to need one hell of a peace offering to get Central Command to welcome him - and, by extension, Saki - back with open arms, and though it sucked to say it, what Saki had given him so far just wasn't enough. She was making up for Kazuma, but he - they - needed something more than that to soothe any ruffled feathers over at HQ and get them to agree to listen to her. But did she have anything else to offer? She wasn't small-time, as far as the Yakuza and the Syndicate went, but she wasn't a big fish either. What more could she know? And how could he get her to tell him?_

 _"You want me to take you in, don't you?" He asked abruptly, preemptively banishing the silence that threatened to fall over them. He looked away from her and back out the window again. "You want me to save you from the Yakuza, from ETOKA, from Kazuma. That's it, right? You want me to take you back with me to LA, where you'll tell basically your whole life story to WOOHP and rat out every Yakuza and Syndicate operation and goon you know in exchange for a spot in Witness Protection. Isn't that right?"_

 _Saki was quiet for a moment, caught a little off-guard by his sudden forwardness, before chuckling quietly. "Yes," she murmured frankly, "that...that was the plan, when we first met."_

 _Dean was not surprised in the least. It was what they all wanted, usually._

 _"I can do it for you, Saki," he said, putting as much tenderness as he could into his words. "I can get you a new home, a new life. I can even get a WOOHP jet down here to fly you back to Los Angeles by tomorrow, if I'm fast. But I- I need- There has to be_ more _, Saki. WOOHP...okay, WOOHP is pretty pissed at me right now. My mission was just Kazuma, and I've overstayed my welcome here in Singapore by a couple of days. They're not going to be thrilled to hear from me again, and unless I tell them I've snagged a big fish they're going to drag their feet on getting you to LA. I-"  
_

 _"What?" Saki's eyes narrowed and hardened. "'Drag their feet'? Why would they do that?" She demanded irately. She pinned her bedsheet to her with one hand, but her other fell to her side and balled into a fist. "Am I not important enough for WOOHP? How many ETOKA agents do they get who want to switch sides?_ _Absolutely incredible," she huffed, growing angrier by the second._

 _"Look," Dean said, "you know more. I know you do. Tell me which firm you worked for, who your boss was, who Kazuma's friends are, anyone you know in the Syndicate-"_

 _She laughed mockingly. "And just give away my bargaining power? WOOHP will never come and help me unless I have something to trade. I've told you enough already. My other secrets are my own, until I am safe and hidden in a secure WOOHP facility, with assurances that I will be given a new identity and home."_

 _"We're not like that," Dean tried to argue. "We'd help you whether you knew something or not!"_

 _"You just said WOOHP wouldn't unless I told you more. And I'm telling you I won't say more until-"_

 _"I said they'd take a little time, alright? We_ do _have other missions and stuff going on, you know, and-"_

 _"Tom," she said, a little irately and intensely urgently, "listen to me. If WOOHP is going to help me escape, they must do so quickly and secretly. There can be no delays. Otherwise I - you - we will both be in very,_ very _great danger."_

 _Dean frowned. "Why? I'm here to protect you. ETOKA and the Yakuza won't suspect a thing. It'll just take a few days, is all. Maybe a week, as I work things out with HQ, maybe arrange for an interview. They just need to know that you're the real deal, that they can trust-"_

 _Saki released her clenched fist and put it roughly on his shoulder, and at once he fell silent. She looked deep into his eyes, and spoke with iron, desperate conviction in her voice._

 _"The danger is real. There can be no delays. WOOHP must act to help me as soon as you contact them, or else the Syndicate and the Yakuza will know about my betrayal and try to find and silence me. I know this, Tom."_

 _"How do you know that?"_

 _"Because I know a secret." She stopped for a moment, taking half a step back, before taking a deep, shaky breath._

 _"I know a secret," she repeated. "A secret so important- It's one of the biggest secrets ever. It could- it could destroy WOOHP...and me, unless I am brought to WOOHP Headquarters immediately. I-" She stopped, before opening her mouth again, but no words came out.  
_

 _Dean stepped closer to her, leaning in towards her, closing in like a hound on the hunt. This was it, he knew. This was what would get Central Command to sit up and pay attention and roll out the red carpet for them. "What is it?" He asked._

 _Saki shook her head. The resolve he saw earlier was fading from her eyes, he saw, and her breathing was becoming quicker, more ragged. "It's so secret," she whispered, ignoring him. Looking at her, Dean saw the same fear she had shown when she met him at the restaurant for their first meeting, only several orders of magnitude more powerful. It was pure, unreasoning terror, and he could see that it gripped her totally and absolutely._

 _He put his arms around her and drew her in to him, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Tell me, Saki," he whispered. "It will help. WOOHP will listen. They'll send out a plane first thing, I know it. Just tell me."_

 _"I can- I can only tell it to your Director - Patrick Alister. I can only speak to Alister!" She cried, tearing free from his embrace. She dropped the bedsheet and went around the bed, hurriedly putting on her clothes._

 _Dean sighed. He had tried, been rebuffed, but he wasn't going to give up. Reluctantly, he started dressing too._

 _"Why can you only tell Patrick? What's so special about him? Let me tell you, I'm a lot better looking than he is," he said, smiling gently, trying to calm her down a little._

 _Saki was breathing a little more evenly now, the fear on her face less evident, though still present. Slipping her blouse on over her head, she said, "It's too dangerous. Nobody else- I can only speak to Alister. Only he can be trusted - the Director of WOOHP. No one else."_

* * *

"She said she wanted some time to think. I told her to just tell me, and she kept talking about her 'bargaining power' or whatever. She just wouldn't believe that we would help get her out of there out of the goodness of our hearts. Looking back," Dean said, a little sardonically, "I can see why."

He looked to Alex for support, and to Clover's immeasurable surprise, Alex nodded sympathetically.

"Eventually, before I left, I managed to get her to understand that look, alright, you have other secrets too, stuff about Syndicate and Yakuza operations and bad guys scattered across Japan and East Asia. Fine. You can keep that. But I need something to catch Central Command's attention, and unless you tell me something big, you're going to have to wait for WOOHP to finish yelling at me and verifying what you know before you hop on a plane to LA. And by that time, you'll already be in danger, like you said."

"What did she say?"

"She said she'd call me later that night, and then she practically threw me out of the room. First time that ever happened to me." He chuckled ruefully. "At around seven that night she found her courage and sent me a text on my com-wallet. She asked me where I was staying, I gave her my hotel address and room number, and she said she'd meet me there. She showed up fifteen minutes later, looking more afraid than I'd ever seen her. She brought a bottle of sake with her, but she didn't touch it the whole time."

"I got straight to business with her. I asked her if she had made up her mind yet, if she was going to tell me something I could tell WOOHP. I reminded her that if she wasn't going to give me any big scoop, she could forget about her express flight to HQ. She didn't say a word. Just sat down on a chair by the window and stared at her hands for, like, five minutes or so. I was about to leave when she finally started to talk."

Dean leaned forwards in his chair, and unconsciously everyone else - even Oscar, who had been listening with a very casual disinterest - leaned forwards as well, the better to hear his words. It was a surreal moment, Clover would later think - for the span of a few heartbeats, everything was silent, save for the sound of her own excited breathing and the gentle, rolling crashing of the waves below them. Moonlight streamed through the window, the pale beams mixing with the dull yellow glare of the lights overhead and illuminating them - but mostly Dean, by his location - with a soft, sacred glow, like the universe's own spotlight, turned on the man who was, for the moment, the star of the show.

"That's when she told me her secret. The mother of all secrets." Dean took a deep breath and exhaled, ragged and slowly. "What she said - it was _sensational_."


	12. Part One: Chapter Six

**Author's Note:** Flashbacks are hard to write and merge with the rest of the narrative. Thankfully, this will be the last flashback for a while.

If my writing in this is unclear or hard to follow, do let me know, and as always ask if you have any questions or would like clarification.

 **Content Warning:** Adult language, death.

* * *

 _ **Part One: Dean's Mission  
**_

 _ **VI**_

* * *

 _"Six months ago, Kazuma and I traveled to Seoul, to meet with another team of ETOKA agents for an assignment. It was a very long operation, the groundwork was so dull, and the atmosphere was so unhappy that, in order to keep myself sane, I entered into a relationship with one of the other agents, a Chinese man from Hong Kong. We met secretly with each other, without the knowledge of the other agents, or the senior Syndicate man who was running the operation. He was very sweet - not at all like Kazuma. You look a little bit like him."  
_

 _Saki looked up and smiled shyly, and Dean gave her a tight-lipped grin in response, meant as a gesture of encouragement. She was speaking softly, with an undercurrent of tension flowing with her words, and Dean figured that she could use the help. The last thing he wanted now was for her to clam up and stop, especially since there were only four days left before she was scheduled to return to Japan with her brutal lout of a husband. If things went south, Saki's big scoop turned out to be a tiny spoonful, and Central Command couldn't bring itself to give a damn, he would need all the time he could get, so the more she said now the better._

 _"His name was Ian, and he told me a story." She paused for a minute, pulling a cigarette out of her purse, which she jammed into her mouth and tried to light with mildly trembling hands. When she finally got it going, she went on, "He was very frightened to. But it was not surprising that he would. In ETOKA, there is more gossip than the higher-ups would like. Sometimes people - especially the lower-level agents - like to make themselves seem important by pretending to be in the know. And sometimes, when you really do know something that's so big...so secret...you have to tell it to someone."_

 _Dean nodded wordlessly, and sat down on the corner of his bed, facing her, balancing his elbows on his knees. Before him, Saki drew on her cigarette and exhaled a shapeless cloud of gray smoke, looking down at the floor all the while, not daring to look at him._

 _"It has to be someone you trust," Saki murmured quietly. She looked up and met his gaze, her hopeful eyes glancing daringly into his own passive ones. "Like I'm telling you, now."_

 _Suddenly, at that moment, for reasons which he was unsure of, he found himself struck by how alone and vulnerable she looked, how hopeless and frightened, and before he knew it he had stood up and crossed the short distance between them, dropping to a knee and placing a firm hand on her shoulder and another over her knee. The smoke from her cigarette drifted into his face but surprisingly he realized that he didn't mind._

 _"Hey, hey. It's all right," he cooed softly, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Just- just keep going, alright?"_

 _Saki looked at him, a deep gratitude and affection mixing with an equally intense fear and doubt on her face and in her eyes. She brought her cigarette to her lips, thought better of it, and stubbed it out in an ashtray sitting on a small lamp table nearby, before looking down at her hands, folded in her lap, for what seemed like an eternity before she brought her eyes back up to Dean again. They were filled this time with a defiant resolution, a bravery that barely masked the uncertainty and terror that lurked deeper within._

 _"Have- have you heard of Rosa?" She asked. "He is an old fox, one of the most cunning in ETOKA, and the most secret - only a handful know his history, and they say that no one, not even at the highest levels of the ETOKA leadership, knows his real name. He is one of the the most important people in the Syndicate, in charge of our most special operations - yet many, even within our ranks, don't even know he exists."  
_

Well, that's me, _thought Dean, to whom all of this was news. He nodded subtly and fought off a confused frown, hoping to hide his ignorance, and with another gentle squeeze of the shoulder he asked her to go on._

 _"The story Ian told me," Saki said, wringing her hands nervously in her lap, "concerned one of Rosa's greatest conspiracies. It is happening right now, in WOOHP."_

 _She paused, swallowing. Her eyes were wandering downward and away from his again and he was tempted to squeeze her shoulder again, or her knee, to bring her attention back, but her uneasiness was evident and more powerful than usual, so he simply waited a few heartbeats for her to collect herself and find her courage again, and watched as her gaze achieved a tenuous focus and became level with his own once more._

 _"When we were together, Ian told me that from October to December of last year he worked for ETOKA in Los Angeles, as a helper in one of Rosa's schemes. He was undercover as an administrative assistant at a real estate agency that was a front for the Syndicate - by day he wrote emails, filed papers, and made coffee, but by night he was the personal assistant to a very senior Syndicate agent named Paula Ackoff. Paula Ackoff," she said slowly, "is responsible for handling the spy that Rosa has placed in the World Organization of Human Protection - very close to the head of WOOHP."_

 _She went quiet, and Dean was glad she did, because her whispered words hit him with greater force than a freight train._

A spy.

 _He felt his jaw slacken and sag, wanting desperately to drop, and for once he was the one to look away, staring out of the window at the street below as he tried to make sense out of the glut of information he had just been fed._

A spy - very close to the head of WOOHP. A spy - that's- that's- _that's fucking crazy_. How- _who_?

 _Who? That was the question now. Who could betray WOOHP, yet not only remain in it, but rise to its highest levels? Who could lie, could deceive, could fool all of them for so long? Dean knew there had been traitors in the past - his undercover mission against Terrence came to mind - but this was something else entirely, a whole different and unprecedented level of malice and treachery. To think that one of his superiors - the people at the top, the people he trusted to give him missions and lead the fight against crime and evil, the people he trusted with his life - to think that any one of them was not only a traitor, but a servant of_ ETOKA _,_ _of all people...to imagine that all their missions, their secrets, their_ lives _were being given away to the enemy..._

 _It made the air drain from his lungs and a cruel, twisting tension tighten in his gut, as he contemplated the unspeakable thought of an institution dear to his heart, to which he had devoted years of his life and to which he planned to devote the rest, corrupted and perverted by an incomprehensible wickedness that was utterly alien to his thinking._

 _"You- you're sure about this?" He asked, turning back to Saki, fighting to keep a tremor out of his voice and the bile out of his throat._

 _"I am. The Syndicate's code name for the spy is 'Gavin'. He was recruited by Rosa personally and is the object of great importance and secrecy. Ian told me that he, Paula Ackoff, and the other ETOKA agents involved in managing Gavin were all handpicked for the operation by Rosa himself, in accordance to a very high standard of competence. He told me about the extreme security measures that are in place to protect Gavin's identity and the very existence of the operation - coded reports that were cut in two and delivered to Rosa separately, flash drives that would erase their data if plugged into the wrong computers, voice recorders rigged with self-destruct devices, and other practices and tools that would keep the details safe from those who were not meant to know. And he talked about the incredibly high volume of information that Gavin provided to Paula Ackoff when they met - hundreds of pages, sometimes more than she could handle."  
_

 _At that point Saki gave out entirely, and with a long sigh she fell into Dean's arms, holding him tightly. "I'm scared, Tom," she breathed. "I- if they ever learn that I told you this..."_

 _"Hey, hey," Dean whispered back to her, patting her softly on the back. "I'm here. You trust me, don't you?"_

 _Inwardly he was still as confused, in shock, and in utter disbelief as before, but he was more than glad to put that aside for a moment in order to comfort her - and, in a way, to allow her to comfort him in turn._

 _They held each other for a while, the only sounds they heard being their breathing and the indifferent noises of the traffic outside, before Dean spoke again._

 _"Do you have a name for Gavin?" He asked, reluctantly turning his thoughts back to the horrible truth Saki had told him. "Who is he? I - WOOHP - needs to know."_

 _Saki pulled herself out of his grip, though she still held on to him by his wrists. "I don't know," she said, "but I know the clues to finding him - Paula Ackoff, Ian, and some others I haven't told you."_

* * *

"Others?" Clover whispered weakly, an expression of uncomprehending horror on her face. "What others? What else did she know?"

Around her, Alex and Oscar looked at her, with grim expressions set in stone on their faces and meaningful - and compassionate - looks in their eyes. This was their second time hearing the story of Dean's mission and they had already had time to deal with the shock, but they knew what emotions were coursing through Clover at the moment and sympathized entirely. The news, when they had first learned it, had been as terrible to them as it was being to Clover at the present.

"Ian told her some rumors he had picked up. Well, not rumors, really - apparently, he had overheard Paula Ackoff talking to one of Rosa's personal messengers in her office once, when she was passing along Gavin's latest batch of secrets. What Ian heard, he told Saki, and she told me." He took a deep breath. "According to her, Paula Ackoff said that everything that WOOHP thinks is gold is shit, made by ETOKA. She said that everybody at the top of the Syndicate was laughing themselves sick, and that Rosa was very proud of this." Dean spread his hands defensively. "I don't know what it means, because she didn't know what it meant, because Ian didn't know what it meant either. It was just what he heard Paula Ackoff say. But Saki and Ian both had a hunch it was related somehow to Gavin the spy, and honestly, considering what Paula was up to - and still is, as far as I know - it's not hard to believe."

 _Rosa was very proud of this_. The name stirred something in Clover, some painful, confused, and awkward memories from years long gone, though no one present knew and she didn't let it show. Unconsciously, her right hand clenched into an impotent fist, which went unnoticed by everyone, including Clover herself, before it loosened of its own accord.

She took a deep breath. "Alright," she said. "Saki told you that there was...there was a traitor, a _spy_ ," there, she'd said it, "in WOOHP. She told you the clues - this Paula Ackoff woman, Ian, and some overheard words that nobody understands. What did you do next?"

"Saki wanted to meet with Patrick Alister and tell him what she knew. She kept saying that she had to meet him right away, that it could only be Patrick, that nothing else was safe and that we couldn't wait. I told her that that was impossible, that ordinary spies like me don't have a direct line to Patrick - not like in the old days, with Jerry," Dean said. "But I promised her I'd contact Central Command ASAP, and that I'd try to be as cagey about her secret as I could, to avoid giving it away and letting the wrong people know. Only I had a small problem - like I said, I had disabled the transponder beacon on my com-wallet, and it turns out that when location services aren't available on that thing, neither are video calls or text messages." He shrugged disarmingly. "I know. Crazy, right? Something they should really consider fixing in an update or something."

Catching Clover's urgent stare, he gave a sheepish, sickly grin and went on. "Anyways, I wasn't so hot on the idea of reactivating the transponder, given what Saki had told me, but I also really needed to get in touch with WOOHP. So, there was only one way left for me to do that."

He paused for effect for a moment, as if inviting them to guess what he'd done. When he was greeted only by two impatient, morose glares and Clover's worried expression, he went on, "I paid a visit to the Singapore branch, and asked Duffy Lechanteur for a favor. He was kind of pissed to see me at first, but he warmed up pretty quick," he said, chuckling softly. "That was when things started going to hell."

* * *

 _Duffy Lechanteur, Head Manager of the WOOHP Singapore branch, muttered unhappily to himself as he hauled himself out of the air-conditioned comfort of his car and into the muggy, damp air of Singapore in summer, made even muggier and damper than usual by a heavy rain that Sunday morning. Water streaked his graying hair, splashed over the lenses of his glasses, and spattered over his cheap suit before he was able to unfurl his umbrella, and his muttering became a little more intense and vitriolic in its feeling and content. Shutting the door and locking it, he dumped his car keys in his pocket before allowing a misplaced sense of vanity to wash over him for a moment, as he wiped water off of his jowly cheeks and emerging double chin and straightened his too-thin, too-short tie, which hung limply over his generous - though by no means oversized - belly. For him, that day, Sunday, June 19th, had all the hallmarks of just another unremarkable and wholly unmemorable day at the office, and he saw no reason to expect that it would be anything otherwise._

 _Then he turned around and saw Dean standing behind him, sheltering beneath a cheap plastic umbrella, wearing a stylish, cool-looking brown suit and a cheeky, bold, presumptuous smile, and all at once all his assumptions about Sunday being a normal day flew straight out the window._

 _"Morning, Duffy," Dean said, sounding contrite and conciliatory. "Miss me?"_

 _"Dean," Duffy growled. "Where the hell have you been? Central Command's been onto me, hounding me day and night! They want me to put your ass in a holding cell before shipping you back to LA - in first class freight,_ _" he added threateningly.  
_

 _Dean's smile widened. "It's a long story, Duffy. But I've been doing good, honest. I-"_

 _"Save it for someone who cares," Duffy snapped. He looked towards the branch office, and made a show of reaching for his com-wallet. "I could have a dozen agents out here in less than a minute. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't sound the alarm."_

 _Dean laughed in his face, before putting on his best hurt-puppy look. "Come on, Duff! What have I ever done to you? Look," he said, his tone turning more serious, his arm looping around Duffy's shoulders, "I swear, I'm onto something. I've got a big lead, bigger than anything we've got this year - heck, maybe even the last ten or twenty years. Trust me, alright? I'm not here to cause trouble, and if you want me to spend the night in a holding cell, fine, I'll do it. All I need is to use the branch office's secure e-mail for a minute to contact HQ, alright?"_

 _Duffy allowed Dean to steer him towards the office. "What have you got?" He asked, still guarded but slightly less hostile than before._

 _Dean knew he was making some progress. "Paid a visit to Kazuma's room last Wednesday and, uh...let's say interesting things happened there, alright? Learned a lot of things, and now I need to contact Central Command, say my apologies for being way overdue on an update, and ask for a few favors."_

 _"What kind of favors?"_

 _"Oh, you know, the usual. A top-priority flight back to LA. A swarm of agents and maybe even some commandos for security. Some investigators. A maximum-security holding cell at the containment center under WOOHP HQ. Heck, maybe even a shrink. Not to mention a guaranteed spot in Witness Protection."_

 _Even Duffy wasn't dumb enough to miss what that meant, and in a moment his entire demeanor changed. "My God, Dean," he whispered, in a voice that was half-resentful, half-awed. "Did you get Kazuma - did you get him to come over to us?"_

 _Dean smiled. "Just a few minutes on the e-mail, alright? That's all I need."_

* * *

"So Duffy let me in and told everyone who tried to stop me to back off, that I had an important lead and that anyone who got in my way would answer to him personally. It felt good to have him watching my back, actually. I mean, he was annoying as hell the whole time - kept asking me what I got on Kazuma and other dumb questions - but it was nice to have someone look out for you, you know?"

Dean leaned back in his seat. "He took me to the communications room, kept bugging me the whole time as I wrote out my message - 'From Dean, Priority 1A, Top Secret, Decode by Senior Communications Officer Only. Message reads: Have made contact with ETOKA agent Saki – , wife of mission target Kazuma – . Claims to have information vital to the safeguarding of WOOHP. Request immediate extraction to WOOHP HQ under highest possible security and a spot in Witness Protection to follow.' It was the only way I could think of to get Patrick's attention without giving too much away and potentially alerting the spy," Dean said. "Oh - I remember I wrote something else too. 'Also, request Head of Central Command and Head of Spies be informed that I remain on-mission and have not been incapacitated or abandoned my assignment.' That was just so Blaine and Alex knew that I had landed on my feet and hadn't slipped my leash for the heck of it."

Clover turned to Alex. "Did you get that?"

"Nobody told me anything," Alex said drily.

The moment he sent the message, Dean continued, was when he made all his mistakes of the day.

"Well, actually, my first mistake of the day was bringing my Laser Fountain Pen with me and using it to sign myself in at the communications room. I left it on the desk next to the sign-in sheet and completely forgot about it, and Duffy picked it up and put it in his pocket when I wasn't looking. I don't know why he did - maybe he wanted to give it back to me later, or maybe he didn't know whose it was and decided to keep it for himself. Either way," Dean said, his voice uncharacteristically grave, "that was...that was a really bad move on my part, letting him run off with my Laser Pen."

His second mistake, Dean went on to say, was actually sending the message.

"I sent the message at, like, eight in the morning. There's a sixteen-hour difference between Singapore and LA, so it was four in the afternoon back at HQ, still plenty of people at the office. I waited in the communications room for the whole damn day for a response. After two hours or so I started getting mad. I mean, it was Priority 1A! It doesn't get anymore high-priority than that!" He exclaimed angrily. "By the third hour I was afraid as hell. I skipped lunch, was too nervous to go out for dinner. Around seven I was about to send another message, when finally a reply came through from Central Command."

"What did it say?" Clover asked.

"'We read you.' That was it," Dean said, the incredulity and anger plain in his voice even now, seven months after it had happened. "That was all they sent. It didn't make sense. It was like they were stalling."

He waited another two hours until nine, and when nothing more came through he decided he had had enough and left. By then, he said, ETOKA had already begun to move.

"I sent a message to Saki asking to meet so I could fill her in and discuss what to do next. I got no response, and by this point I was already losing my shit. I'd barely eaten in twelve hours, WOOHP was giving me the cold shoulder, and I had spent the entire day cooped up in a pretty small room with no one but a boring communications clerk for company. When Saki started ignoring me too, I kinda lost it. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided I'd go to to the Stamford to check up on her personally, and if Kazuma was there, well tough luck for him."

"I got to the Stamford and decided to take the stealthy way up like I did my first time there. When I'd climbed my way up to her room I found the whole place was cleaned out - no trace of them was left, other than a messy pile of blankets on the bed. I went back out into the lobby and asked a lady at Reception why Room 3812 was empty, and she told me I was mistaken, that 3812 was occupied by one Mr. Kazuma and his wife, Saki. That was the thing - they hadn't checked out of the hotel. No one knew they were gone."

"At this point, I was getting seriously freaked out. I started to fear the worst, that somehow ETOKA or the Yakuza or just Kazuma had caught on to Saki and was taking her back to Japan. That seemed more and more likely by the minute, so I called a cab and sent the driver straight to the airport, where I asked around for all departures to Japan, went through all the flight lists, got into a fight with a security guard. I was going nuts," Dean said, running a hand frantically through his hair. His breathing had grown quicker, and a look of desperation had crept onto his face, as if he was reliving the experience. "Eventually I managed to sweet-talk an air hostess from China Airlines into helping me out. She told me that two hours ago an unscheduled Japan-registered private jet had taken off. About a dozen passengers boarded, all Japanese. The centers of attention were two passengers who were carried onboard on stretchers - a man and a woman, both in comas, their faces wrapped in bandages and their wrists strapped to the rails on the stretchers." He grimaced. "It didn't take a genius to figure out that this was Kazuma and Saki, being taken back to Japan by their Yakuza buddies."

Dean sighed mournfully, and for the first time that night he became quiet. He folded his hands together in his lap, and from where she was sitting Clover could see that he was squeezing them together, so hard that his knuckles and fingertips were turning white. She watched, dumbstruck, as a tear threatened to leak out of his eye for a moment, before he quickly and deftly brushed it away.

"Hell, I don't even know why I- why I cared that much," he muttered. "She wasn't even my type. But I...I...I kinda got the feeling, you know, that it was my fault, somehow. I didn't know how at the time - I was too excited and scared and had no idea what the hell was going on - but later, much later, I put it together."

He took a deep breath, and went on, "But that wasn't the end of it. After I learned that Saki and Kazuma had been kidnapped, I wanted to get back in touch with WOOHP, partly to update them on the situation but mostly so I could tear them a whole new asshole for sitting on their fucking asses for so long. At this point, I was pretty - I don't know, I was mad, I was afraid, I was sorry about Saki. I wasn't thinking straight - hell, I guess you could say that I'd lost it."

He looked at Clover and Alex for understanding, with an almost-pathetic, pleading look in his eyes, and despite themselves both found themselves moved by the unrefined emotion he expressed, which reached out and touched a chord in their hearts, a chord which had always belonged to Sam. Clover nodded knowingly and Alex even managed a sympathetic look, and emboldened by their empathy Dean smiled gratefully for a moment, before his eyes fell and a sullen look fell over his face.

"Yeah. Uh, anyways, I wanted- I wanted to contact WOOHP again, but the branch office had closed for the night and I needed someone to let me in. I knew where Duffy lived - we'd stopped by his apartment when he was picking me up from the airport when I arrived - so I took a cab there, took the elevator up, and knocked on his door a couple of times. I figured he was asleep but I didn't give a damn. I wanted the keys to the office - that was all I was thinking about. Just get the keys, get on the email, and then just fucking vent and shit all over Central Command for letting Saki get taken away."

"I knocked on his door like, two or three times, but there was no answer and I wasn't in the mood to wait. I tried to break the lock or something, and it was then that I realized that I'd lost my Fountain Pen Laser earlier in the day. I stewed in the hallway for a minute, mad as hell, and eventually I got myself so worked up that I actually managed to kick the door open - don't ask me how I did it, I don't know, and I don't think I could do it again." Dean's voice caught, and he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Clover looked at Alex and Oscar, confused, but both of them were staring firmly at the floor, dreadful expressions written on their faces.

Eventually, Dean managed to find his courage again, and his voice when he did was shaky and weak. "I- I uh, I stepped into Duffy's apartment and shut the door behind me. It was dark inside, so I turned on the light. I called out his name, but there was no answer. I looked around for a minute and went to his bedroom, and...and..." He took a deep, ragged breath. "Duffy was dead. He was lying on the bed, face-up. There was a pillow over his face, like someone had tried to muffle him, and his arms were splayed outward, like people were holding him down. He- he- his throat was cut," Dean choked out, burying his face in his hands. "I found my pen on the floor next to the bed, uncapped. That was what did it. The fuckers found the laser - _my_ laser - in Duffy's suit, and they used it to cut his throat."

He lifted his head from his hands to laugh bitterly. "And I swear - right when I saw that it was my laser, I heard sirens approaching in the distance. No joke - it was like bullshit straight out of a movie or something. I guess when I broke the door down I must've scared some of the neighbors, and they must've called the cops. Whatever it was, I couldn't hang around for long. I grabbed my pen, changed into my catsuit, and rappelled down with my Bungee Belt. I changed back into normal clothes as soon as I felt I was far enough away, then ran to the first ATM I saw and tried to use my WOOHP credit card to withdraw as much cash as I could. But get this - my card was denied. WOOHP - or someone at WOOHP - had frozen my operational account. And they didn't even know Duffy was dead yet!"

"After all the bullshit that had happened that day, I figured that I had nothing left to lose, and since it wouldn't take the Singapore cops too long to figure out how Duffy was killed I was already a wanted man. So, I used my Laser Pen to burn open the locks on the ATM and took all the money I could carry - something around twenty thousand dollars. Then I _ran_ \- ran my ass off, to get out of Singapore and away from WOOHP, ETOKA, anyone who wanted me."

* * *

They took a break for a few minutes to stretch their legs. Dean was standing by the window and Oscar had left the room to use the restroom, leaving just Alex and Clover, pacing together, back and forth, behind the chairs where Clover sat.

"How you holding up?" Alex asked her, smiling sadly.

Clover sighed wearily, folding her arms over her chest. "I don't know. This is- this is all- I can't believe this. Any of this. An ETOKA spy? Dean framed?" She shook her head, shutting her eyes tightly as if to keep out the reality of what she now knew. "This is too much."

Alex nodded, placing a hand on her shoulder and patting softly. "I know you feel. I didn't - when Dean contacted me a couple of days ago, I didn't believe it either. Not at first. But then I thought about it, and I saw that it actually made," she paused, " _some_ sense."

"How?"

"Dean sends his message to Central Command. The spy - Gavin, whatever - receives that message and stalls for time while he alerts ETOKA. ETOKA gives orders to the Yakuza clan they're partnered with to pull Saki and Kazuma out of Singapore, and tells their local goons to kill Duffy and frame Dean. It's...kind of smart, actually," she said, disgustedly. "To frame Dean. That way, the Syndicate gets WOOHP's help in looking for him, and any leads we find on him are shared with them, courtesy of Gavin the spy."

"How high of a priority is looking for Dean back at WOOHP?"

Alex shrugged. "I don't know. He's on the Wanted List, but aside from Patrick and Blaine yelling at me after news broke that Duffy died, I haven't heard anything. Supposedly Central Command is looking for him, but I'm not a part of it. My spies and I just have orders to arrest him on sight."

"So why didn't you?" Clover asked curiously. "When he first got in touch with you again?"

"Because Alex knows I'm a good guy," Dean said virtuously, from his place by the window. Evidently he had overheard their conversation. "And because my story makes sense. Saki was right - there _is_ a spy in WOOHP. Why else would they have waited so long before responding to my message? How else could ETOKA have known of her if someone at WOOHP hadn't tipped them off? And why else would WOOHP have frozen my funds before they knew Duffy was dead?"

Grudgingly, Alex nodded. Clover looked at her, then back to Dean. "This was all back in June," she said. "It's January now. Alex said you contacted her only a few days ago. Why now?"

Dean smiled grimly and turned to face them, leaving against the windowsill with his hands thrust in his pockets guardedly. "Well, after...everything happened, I sneaked across the border into Malaysia, and from there I went to first Bangkok, then Hong Kong. I had to keep moving, you know - every time I thought I was safe someone would start getting close and start asking questions: local police working with WOOHP, local crooks working for the Syndicate, and sometimes even WOOHP or ETOKA agents themselves. In Hong Kong I traded most of the money I had left - around five grand - for a fake US passport." He pulled it out of his suit pocket and tossed it to Clover, who opened it and saw Dean's smiling face, next to the name of Samuel Pulley.

"Figured that would keep me safe. Then, last week, some guy shows up in the hotel I'm staying at - and this is a really shady hotel, ok, somewhere really out-of-the-way - and asks around for Sam Pulley, says I owe him money. I don't owe anyone money, and absolutely no one knows who the hell Sam Pulley is."

"Except for the guy who made your fake," Alex said.

"Girl. But yeah. I guess ETOKA must have found her and either paid her off or beat it out of her. Anyway, I decided I'd had enough of running, and that I should try my luck with convincing Alex to help me out. Even if she didn't and turned me in to WOOHP - well, I figured life in prison would be better than letting the Syndicate get their hands on me." He turned to Alex, and flashed a grin that was half sincere, half repentant. "Thanks for that, by the way. Not snitching on me."

Clover flipped through the passport idly. It looked somewhere between new and used, and had just enough stamps and stapled visas to look normal and unremarkable. "This is...pretty good quality," she said, a trace of admiration in her tone. "Only five thousand?"

"She wanted ten, but I talked her down."

"You mean he went down on her," Alex muttered. Dean colored, but said nothing.

Clover tossed the passport back to Dean. "Why Alex?" She wanted to know. "Weren't you afraid she'd turn you in?"

Dean shrugged. "Well, yeah. But I mean - there was literally no one else for me to turn to. Jerry's dead. Sam's gone. Blaine's different these days, being a desk jockey and all, and besides I thought it might have been him - that he might be Gavin. Or someone else - but maybe him." He screwed up his face in frustrated concentration, then shook his head. "And Britney's been fired. So Alex-"

"What?" Clover looked at him, then turned on Alex. "Britney's _fired?_ Ok, what on _Earth_ has happened to WOOHP since I've been gone?"

Alex, for her part, had the decency to look sheepish. "Yeah. Sorry. Something else I forgot to mention," she said contritely.

Clover sighed in frustration and bewilderment, and moved around the chair, sinking down onto the cushions with a tired, boneless flop.

"This is all - this is a lot to handle," she mumbled, more to herself than Dean or Alex.

She closed her eyes and massaged her temples, rubbing feverishly, as if hoping that she might be able to will all of this away by intense concentration. Behind her, Alex looked at Dean with an accusatory look, blaming him for her friend's distress. Dean just laughed, and moved back to the windowsill.

Suddenly, the door to the room opened and in walked Dina, followed by Oscar, who surveyed the awkward atmosphere of the room with an expression of wry amusement crossed crossed with a resignation that suggested he was already well-accustomed to such undefinable tensions. Clearing his throat, he looked at Clover, unconsciously straightening his tie as he did so.

"Clover," he said, in a soft tone that contrasted immeasurably with his usual affable, officious style, "I should like to speak with you alone for a while, please. Outside, if that would be alright." He paused. "Now that you've heard all of this, there remain, still, some things that you and I should discuss."

Clover opened her eyes and looked up, the blank look on her face belying the multiple conflicting emotions that roiled beneath the surface. Wordlessly, she stood up and nodded, walking out of the room with Oscar following close behind.

Unbidden, Dina shut the door and locked it, before turning her watchful gaze onto Dean.


	13. Part One: Chapter Seven

**Author's Note:** My thanks to those who have reviewed this work, and a reminder that from April to late May updates will be sporadic and rare.

I'm sorry for the lame ending lol but it lowkey ties into the next chapter I swear.

* * *

 _ **Part One: Dean's Mission**_

 _ **VII**_

* * *

They stepped outside into Oscar's mammoth backyard, a featureless sea of tall grass which stretched for more than half a mile along the cliffside until it ended at the gray stone wall that formed the perimeter of his property. With a strangely carefree gait, he took them along a dirt path that took them perilously close to the edge of the cliff, prevented from plummeting to their deaths on the wave-swept rocks below by little more than a few feet of dirt and a low metal railing. It was almost a cloudless night and the moon lit everything in sight, allowing Clover to discreetly study Oscar's face as they walked, watching his brow furrow and unfurrow, his jaw clench and unclench in succession as he tried to speak, but could find no words.

Thus, a calming silence fell over them for a few minutes, before Oscar at last was able to break it. "So now you know why I've asked you to come," he said bluntly, evidently giving up on subtler approaches to the topic. His eyes were focused downward on the path before him, and he kept his hands in his pockets which, combined with his slow, loping walk, gave him an air of aimlessness that seemed very much out-of-place. "There is a spy, right at the top of WOOHP. He's been there for months - over a year, at least." He paused for a minute, waiting for Clover to reply, and when she didn't he finally looked up and met her searching, forlorn gaze. She could guess where this was headed, what he would say next.

"It does mean you're rather well placed to look into this matter for us now, doesn't it?" He asked, a touch of apologetic regret in both the tone of his voice and the quirk of his smile. "Disowned by the WOOHP family, so to speak. An outsider. Beyond suspicion." His stride slowed, just a little. "Perfect for making some discreet and unofficial inquiries, for conducting a very private investigation. Besides," he laughed briefly, "it isn't as if you have a _job_ or anything right now."

Clover looked away, turning to the ocean next to them, below them, stretching out to the horizon. The moonlight reflected brokenly off the waves, dancing and shifting on the surface of the water, hazy, uncertain, inconstant. There was a term she learned in some literature class once, about when the nature around you seems to reflect your feelings. What was it again? She couldn't remember, but it would've worked for her, just then - when the very sea mirrored her own powerlessness and ignorance, and seemed to embody the shapeless, violent blur her thoughts and feelings formed in her mind, as the terrible truths she'd just heard merged with equally painful memories she'd spent the past year trying to bury for good.

 _A spy._

The thought was still too much for her to think about for any length of time, always slipping away and morphing into something just as mysterious as soon she tried to focus and pin it down.

 _Just exactly how long has Gavin-_

 _Who-_

 _Paula Ackoff-_

 _How did-_

 _Britney-_

 _Everything that WOOHP thinks is gold-_

 _Dean-_

 _No-_

 _Blaine-_

 _Who-_

 _Laughing themselves sick-_

 _Why-_

 _Gavin-_

 _Rosa was very proud of this._

The name emerged from the din in her mind, rising above the turmoil of confusion, anger, betrayal, fear, ignorance, regret, and a hundred other feelings too nebulous to name. From the chaos came one sinister, unshakeable fact - a name, a hazy shadow of a face, belonging to what was perhaps the one and only demon of Clover's past, someone who had stolen something of hers almost two years ago now, just before Jerry promoted her to serve as Head of Spies.

 _I never thought I'd hear about him again._

A memory surged forth to her, pouring to the fore of her thoughts in an uncontrollable torrent. A hot cell, disgusting amounts of sweat dripping down her face and clinging to her clothes, and her own voice, speaking pathetically and impotently, in conversation with an overpowering silence. Confusion- regret- embarrassment and shame-

Her gut tightened, her cheeks reddened - imperceptible in the darkness, even with the bright moon - and without knowing it her fists clenched. She stopped in her tracks, causing Oscar to stop as well as cast her an apprehensive look. At once, she knew what she had to do - what she _couldn't_ do.

"It's too much," she breathed. "A spy...WOOHP...I can't..."

Clover tore her gaze from the waves and the flickering streaks of moonlight and back to Oscar, giving him a look that spoke of incomprehension and sorrow. She took a deep breath, and exhaled long and slow, closing her eyes and willing calm and order into the turbulence inside of her. She missed the sight of Oscar's face falling, sparing her further grief and the guilt of disappointment, and after a moment that seemed to stretch for an eternity she managed, with great effort, to regain control over her memories, thoughts, and emotions.

"Get the FBI, or the CIA, or someone else to handle the job," she said, trying to be rational and helpful. "Just not me. I don't- I don't know what to do. Or if I can even do anything in the first place. There's just-"

"The Assistant Secretary General won't have that," Oscar replied stubbornly. He took a few steps forward, and stopped and turned around when it became clear she wouldn't follow. "The Assistant SG is very clear - no one must know. Not at the DPA, and definitely not at the rest of the UN, or in the world's governments. Imagine the scandal if news of this were to leak!" He exclaimed, pulling a hand out of his pocket and waving it for emphasis. "After Jerry's fiasco in Bangkok- do you know," he demanded suddenly, his voice slipping into bureaucratic arrogance, "how long it took us to regain the UN's trust after that Impeachment disaster? You do realize that for the World Organization of Human Protection to protect the world, the world must agree to be protected? If the UN or its member-states knew that there was an ETOKA spy at the highest levels of WOOHP, how do you think they would react? I will tell you," he said animatedly, not waiting for her response. "They will have WOOHP's funding cut to pennies. They will close its branch offices. They will stop sharing information. And they will never, _ever_ allow WOOHP to operate in their territory again. WOOHP needs local knowledge and consent, you know. They will never consent to anything we do again if they knew, which means no arrests, no investigations, nothing. And that," he concluded desperately, "would cripple WOOHP forever."

Clover winced, suitably cowed by Oscar's tirade and uncharacteristically passionate concern. But a gnawing fear - a fear of the unknown, a fear of her own failures, both in the past and potentially with this, and a fear of what she might find, where this could take her - continued to rule her, and she remained tenuously firm in her refusal. "I'm sorry," she said plaintively, "but my answer's still no. This isn't- it's- I don't know how-"

Oscar sighed, held up a hand to silence her, and slowly walked up to her until he was right in front of her, looming over her. Unsure of herself - and of the world in general - Clover's eyes trailed downward, staring irresolutely at the ground, not at all wishing to meet Oscar's determined stare.

"The thing is," he said quietly, "that a few days before Jerry died he suggested something similar to me. That there _is_ a spy."

Clover's eyes snapped up.

Oscar frowned and took a step back. "He never mentioned his suspicions to you?" He asked, reading the surprise on her face.

"No," Clover whispered, tilting her head in puzzlement and a lingering sense of loss. "I wasn't...allowed to see him. Before he died."

Her emotions threatened to boil over again with greater ferocity - anger, grief, and above all, an aggressive and violent confusion and perplexity that surrounded all her last memories of Jerry, Sam, and now her thoughts of the spy as well. Gritting her teeth unconsciously, she tried to restrain herself, to empty her mind and force herself into reality and the present, to see nothing but Oscar in front of her, hear nothing but his voice, the roll of the waves, and the rustle of the grass, as she attempted vainly to quell the raging storm brewing within.

"Ah, yes," Oscar said apologetically, wholly oblivious to the turmoil starting to unfold again inside her. "I had forgotten. You weren't cleared. I'm sorry about-"

"What did you say to him?" Clover blurted out hastily. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep herself together in the face of Oscar's well-meaning blathering, especially when it was about her late friend and mentor.

He sighed. "Well, I'm afraid I dismissed his concerns entirely. I thought his exhaustion or his paranoia had gotten the better of him, and that it was just some desperate excuse to justify that mess in Bangkok and keep Patrick Alister out of power." He sighed again, turning away from Clover and leaning over the railing to gaze contemplatively at the sea before them. "That crazy mess," he repeated, a touch bitterly.

He looked over his shoulder at Clover. "It is not every day the head of the UN's own law enforcement agency goes off and personally orders an illegal operation, you know. The Assistant Secretary General and I both felt that there had been gross incompetence on Jerry's part, that he had gone rogue, off the rails completely - a view that the rest of the DPA and the UN at large shared enthusiastically, to say the least. We couldn't trust anything he said ever again. Not that he said much after that," he muttered, more to himself than Clover.

Clover said nothing, wordlessly joining him on the railing, propping her elbows on the midriff-high polished metal that shone in the moonlight. Her thoughts were corralled into a semblance of order again, and though she was hardly at peace she was able to think clearly now, to hear her own voice over the din inside her and the gentle roaring of the waves dashing on the rocks beneath her. An idea occurred to her, something vague and ambiguous, more gut intuition than any sort of reason, as she saw an opportunity suggest itself from among the inexplicable confusion of everything she had learned tonight. There was something that connected all of this, she was beginning to think. Sam - Jerry - Dean - there was a link, somewhere, somehow.

"Did Jerry say that a spy - _the_ spy - was what caused Operation Impeachment to fail?"

Oscar shrugged. "Something along those lines, yes, I think so. In truth," he confessed, "I remember little of our conversation. I came to him in the hospital expecting to hear the dying ramblings of a broken old man. And that was what I got. If I had known there was any truth in..."

He trailed off and fell silent, but Clover had already heard what she needed to know.

 _The spy - did Gavin betray Jerry? Betray Sam? Did he cause...everything? Sam's kidnapping, Jerry's heart attack and accident, Patrick Alister's being made Director, my firing, Saki's kidnapping, Dean's framing?_

Clover took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Before Jerry - and, by extension, Sam - had been brought into the picture, she'd wanted nothing more than to be done with WOOHP forever, and the revelations of the night had only reinforced her desire with their terrible implications. Now, though, she needed to know. For Sam, for Jerry - she _needed_ to know.

She had spent the past year trying - and failing - to forget WOOHP, to put it behind her. But here, now, seemed to be, at last, an opportunity for closure. A chance to learn _why_ , to banish all the doubts and uncertainties and fears which had plagued her ever since _that night_. A chance, if not to make things right, then at least to understand, to make sense out of the bewildering turn of events that had seen her beloved boss die in disgrace, her best friend get shot and disappear, and herself summarily cast out of an institution to which she had dedicated almost eight years of faithful, joyous service, into a world where she had no prospects, no comfort, and no future.

 _Here,_ she thought, _is_ _a chance to...to know what Jerry was up to before he died. And maybe even know what happened to Sam._

"Will you do it, Clover?" Oscar asked next to her, leaning closer to her. "Take the job, solve the case? Go forwards, backwards, do whatever it takes?" He spoke quite casually, as if asking the question was just a formality, but Clover could hear an undercurrent of his earlier urgency and uncertainty in his voice.

She opened her eyes. A surprising calm swept over her as she mentally steeled herself to revisit old memories she'd wished forgotten and re-enter some painful parts of her bygone career with WOOHP, and for a brief, blessed moment she felt numb, at peace.

"Fine," she answered flatly.

She turned to look at him, a faraway but resolute gleam in her eyes. "Alright, Oscar. I'll do this. I'll get to the bottom of this."

 _For WOOHP. For Jerry. For Sam. And maybe for me, too._

* * *

They kept walking along the cliffside. Oscar's hands were back in his pockets again but he walked a little more energetically now, his strides wider and faster, so quick that often he had to wait for Clover, who walked a little sluggishly, as if in a dream, to catch up.

"I am glad you've decided to do this for us, Clover," he was saying, as part of a largely one-sided conversation that Clover, still musing on the significance of what she'd agreed to and what on Earth she was going to do now, only half-heartedly listened to. "Very grateful. And the Assistant Secretary General will be, too, once I pass the word. It's very important work you're doing, you know," he said, as if trying to prove a point. "WOOHP has many informers embedded under cover in many gangs and criminal networks around the globe, and every day that Gavin continues to spy for ETOKA their lives are put in more and more danger. No pressure," he added hastily.

"How many?" Clover asked offhandedly, still lost in her own thoughts.

"Nearly two thousand, take a few. Within the Syndicate itself, we budget for a hundred and sixty, spread across the world," Oscar said, speaking with a bureaucrat's confidence in and affection for numbers and facts. "It's highly likely that Gavin has already exposed them to ETOKA," he continued mournfully. "We'd get them out, of course - extract them - but that would alert the spy, wouldn't it?"

Clover hummed noncommittally.

"And that's the problem - there's nothing we can do at WOOHP to deal with this...this..." He fumbled for the right word, before settling on, "This crisis. We can't conduct surveillance, make arrests, or interrogate - to do any of those would require the men-in-black or the investigators, who work for WOOHP Central Command and the likes of Blaine, Rick Boring, and Tomas Eviline, all of whom must, like anyone at that organization, be considered suspects. We can't limit anyone's access to secrets or sensitive information, again for fear of alerting Gavin."

He suddenly paused, his eyes wide with sudden realization, before muttering a curse and starting off again at a brisk, angry pace.

"What's wrong?" Clover asked. "Well - what _else_ is wrong?"

"I just remembered," he muttered. "One of our most successful missions - Operation Magic - Gavin probably has access to that too, doesn't he?" He gave a frustrated grunt and kicked petulantly at the dirt in front of him. "Damn it," he growled. "Our best informer-"

"Operation Magic?" A puzzled frown appeared on Clover's face, before she brightened as the memory returned to him. "Oh! Wasn't that Patrick Alister's super-secret informer inside the Syndicate? The one with all the special handling and classified details and stuff?"

Oscar looked at her quizzically, warily, before nodding and smiling sheepishly. "I forget you used to be a quite senior officer at WOOHP. Yes, Codename Wizard is still our most secret source, providing us information from the very heart of the ETOKA leadership. His mission, Operation Magic, has been ongoing for quite some time now. It's become WOOHP's mainstay, in fact - a very sizeable share of WOOHP's resources go into the Magic task force these days. The secrets Wizard provides us - WOOHP hasn't turned up such good material in years, perhaps ever. It's what won back the confidence of the UN after the Impeachment disaster, and what keeps WOOHP - and, by extension, Patrick Alister - in the world's good graces." He laughed bitterly. "Now that I think about it, I suppose it's poetic justice. WOOHP has Wizard spying for them in ETOKA, and ETOKA has Gavin spying for them in WOOHP. That's only fair, isn't it?"

Clover considered that. Back when she was Head of Spies - the memories were still dusty to her, having been untouched for so long, but she remembered reading some of the Magic reports that Alister had smugly and triumphantly presented to Jerry and the other WOOHP section heads. To her it seemed like really boring stuff - banking records, shipping manifests, flight records, and other meaningless words and numbers that had threatened to put her to sleep - but everyone else, barring Jerry, had seemed pretty impressed. Blaine, who was still just Head of Operations then, even remarked to her how Wizard was providing information about the Syndicate that he had been trying to get at for months, and a lot more besides.

"Have you seen this stuff, Clover?" He had asked elatedly, a wide smile on his face, as they rode the elevator down from the executive conference room together, one hot August afternoon. "Magic is a gold mine! I was talking to Rick earlier, and he told me that in all his time as Head of Investigations he's never seen so much high-quality, detailed, and just _juicy_ information. Now, if we could just start trading this to other countries in exchange for leads and information of their own..."

Her memory trailed off into rawer, more hurtful places as she remembered a different aspect to the encounter. A wave of anguish surged through her before she was able to contain it, making her heart clench and her breath catch, just for a moment.

 _I wasn't even thinking about what he was saying at the time. All I could think about then was - I kept picturing him with Sam, and him being so..._ happy _and...and_ excited _when he was with her, and I_ hated _it, but I didn't want him to know I was still...that I wasn't..._

She sighed through her nose, forcing the memory down and mentally cursing Oscar for indirectly and unwittingly bringing it up again. It occurred to her that she was off to a good start on wading through her old experiences - the first one she'd remembered since she'd agreed to take Oscar's stupid, insane mission, and it hadn't even lasted a minute before she quelled it.

* * *

"Have you heard anything," Clover asked at last, having decided that she really might as well do so while she could, "about Sam?"

They were making their way back to the house now. A wind had appeared, a cool ocean breeze, and the musky scent of salt permeated the air they breathed. The waves crashed against the rocks with more agitation than before, and again Clover tried to remember what that term was, about nature reflecting your emotional state.

"Who?" Oscar asked, looking puzzled for a moment, before a look of understanding dawned over his face. "Ah, yes. The girl from the Bangkok incident. Samantha Simpson, wasn't that her name? Traveling under a fake Canadian passport as Rebecca Turner. The Canadians were very upset with WOOHP because of that - almost as much as the Thai, in fact. Another reason Jerry had to go," he said, talking more to himself than Clover now. "Turner - why do I keep thinking of her by her false identity, when I know her real name is Samantha Simpson?"

"Oscar," Clover said irritably. Deep down, however, she was intrigued, now that she was already starting to get answers to _that night_. _So that's how Canada got involved in the whole thing_ , she thought, recalling her own confused reaction to the news, back when she'd first heard it from the WOOHP rumor mill.

"Hmm?" Oscar asked. "Oh, yes. Simpson." His tone and expression changed suddenly to one of guarded displeasure. "Of what concern is she to you?" He demanded to know.

Clover's annoyance heightened, and she fought off an urge to get mad. "First of all, she's one of my best friends, ok? You can't blame me for asking after her, _especially_ since the last time anyone heard of her was more than a year ago, when she was shot," she said, quickly and heatedly. "Second, you told me that Jerry thought the spy was what made Operation Impeachment fail. If there's a link, I need to know what happened to her. She can tell us more about...about...you get the picture!" She almost shouted, not quite sure what the picture was itself but willing to make any excuse that might lead her closer to her long-lost friend.

Oscar's pace slowed, and he cast an assessing, penetrating gaze over Clover which she withstood defiantly, roused to indignation by his wariness and his seeming indifference to Sam. "I wonder," he said slowly, not breaking his stride, "whether..."

He looked away and trailed off. Clover clenched her jaw, angry at being given the silent treatment, and was about to unleash a torrent of verbal - and maybe some light physical - abuse that would crash against him with more violence and force than one of the waves below, when at length he sighed and cleared his throat.

"Since you ask, Clover, and since you are doing us this favor, I will answer. But before I do, I must stress to you that this is absolutely, completely top-secret. Only the highest WOOHP officers - and the Assistant Secretary General and myself, of course - know of this. Do you understand?" He asked, grudgingly. "The fewer people who know about her, the less that is said about her, the better. Patrick Alister wants very much to pretend that Operation Impeachment never happened, and the Assistant Secretary General and I agree wholeheartedly."

"Just get on with it," Clover snapped. But her words were cooler than before, less heated, her frustration at being refused replaced by a hopeful - and, at the same time, nervous and fearful - sense of expectation and impending relief at finally being able to answer a question that had infested almost every waking moment and haunted every dream she had had in the past fourteen months.

"Simpson," Oscar said, not using her first name, bothering Clover immensely for how _wrong_ it sounded, "was recovered by a WOOHP commando team almost a year ago now, sometime last January, near the end of the month. She was in Russia, I think - somewhere with snow, I know for sure. She was entered into Witness Protection in early February. That's all I know - you know how Witness Protection works, Clover," he said, forestalling her eager, desperate follow-up questions. "They give them a new home, a job, a new identity. Then they take all the records, lock them up in a box, and throw away the key. And the box, too, for good measure."

A wave of disappointment washed over Clover, mixed with a blessed feeling of relief that Sam was alive. Her heart leaped happily in her chest, yet at the same time the frustration of being denied further news threatened to crush and break it. _No, no! I'm so close!_

"Do you know where she lives, at least? What her new identity is?" She asked frantically, but with a sense of resigned hopelessness. She was already sure what the answer would be.

Oscar shook his head. "I do not know, and I do not care. And even if I did care, WOOHP would not tell me. All I know is that she is alive, back in America, and living quietly, in a place where she will not be disturbed. I know nothing besides that - again, it's how Witness Protection works." He looked at her severely, his eyes narrowing. "This isn't going to be a problem, is it, Clover? The possible link between Bangkok and Gavin is all well and good, but keep in mind that it is only speculation, based on Jerry's dying words. He was very different near the end, even before Impeachment and his accident - you remember when he locked himself in his office for months with all those old files?" He sighed. "All I'm saying is, there are other leads to follow - this Paula Ackoff woman, for one, who I gather is still in Los Angeles, even as we speak. Or maybe that Ian fellow Dean mentioned. Don't let this Simpson business distract you from the real goal," he lectured, in a condescending, didactic tone that implied he knew better than her.

A tense silence fell between them as they continued back towards Oscar's house. Clover radiated relief, irritation, and disappointment in equal measure, and Oscar, evidently sensing this, thought it best not to disturb her.

After a while, however, he felt the need to try and mend the damage his anticlimactic revelation and his pedantic warning seemed to have done, and he tried, with sincerely good intentions, to reach out to her on what he thought was safe territory. "I was not aware this- that the Simpson girl was so close to you," he said, hesitantly.

"We were best friends since high school," Clover said after a short pause, smiling in happy reminiscence. For once, the memories weren't so depressing or volatile. "We met in freshman year. We went to the same college, roomed together."

Oscar smiled too, glad to have brought out some cheer in his companion of the moment. Feeling emboldened by her response, he asked, with total and genuine innocence, "I heard once that she was...involved...with the Head of Central Command, the Blaine fellow. Is that true?"

At once, he realized he'd done something wrong, judging by the way Clover's smile hardened, then fell completely, and how her eyes glossed over with a numb, hurt look to them. "Involved?" She exclaimed, half incredulously, half angry. "More like-"

She stopped, visibly restraining herself, before saying, tightly, "Yes. Yes, she was."

 _Sam and Blaine_ , she thought, unwelcome images of the two of them together - holding hands on the bench in front of the dorm back at Mali-U, studying at the library, eating together in the WOOHP cafeteria - fighting their way to the forefront of her mind. _My Sammy. My Blaine._ _Sam and Blaine, sitting in a tree. B - ET - R - AY - I - N - G._

She ground her teeth hard, loud enough for Oscar to hear over the now-fading breeze, trying jealously to stamp out the memories. Hurt, fury, and envy mixed with love and affection, and the resulting concoction was too poisonous for her to think about, and with great difficulty she managed to bury another unpleasant burden of the past.

* * *

Oscar fumbled with the keys as he unlocked the back door.

"I'll be keeping Dean here," he said, not looking up from his keyring as he searched for the right one. "It's too dangerous to bring him into LA. He is still on the top of the WOOHP Wanted List, and my home is the last place they will think to look for him."

Clover nodded. "I'll keep Alex," she said. "And would it be cool with you if I borrowed Dina, too? This might be more than a two-girl job."

"By all means, please. I was going to suggest it myself." At length, he found the right key and stepped in, the warm stale air of the house mixing pleasantly with the cool, salty atmosphere outside. "I'll let her know she's been reassigned. She's quite resourceful, I've found. She should be valuable to your investigation."

"Thanks."

"I'll expect updates every now and then. When you feel like you've made breakthroughs, do remember to let me know, please. And if there are any materials you need - any documents or anything - do not hesitate to ask me. My security clearance these days is not what it used to be - Patrick Alister imposed new restrictions after he was appointed Director - but many WOOHP documents and reports are still sent to the Assistant Secretary General, and I could probably deliver those to you. Let me know if you need anything."

They made their way back towards the room where Alex, Dean, and Dina were. Clover noticed that most of the lights were off now. Somewhere a shower was running, and for no reason at all she remembered that tonight was a school night.

"Good luck, Clover," Oscar said, knocking on the door for Dina to let them in. "And thank you again, for agreeing to do this. If you find Gavin, somehow, WOOHP, the DPA, the UN - all will be in your debt."

The door opened, and Dina's diligent, alert face, with its tight, ready half-smile, peered out at them. From where she was standing, Clover could see Dean passed out on the sofa, his hands folded over his stomach, while Alex slouched lazily on one of the chairs, idly flicking her finger over her smartphone, with a bored expression on her face.

 _This is it. This is the team, now. An unemployed ex-spy, a Head of Spies who barely has any spies to be head of, and a spy who everyone else thinks is a traitor._

She looked at Oscar, who was exchanging low, quiet words with Dina, occasionally glancing back in her direction. _Not to mention the United Nations' errand boy and his bodyguard, who was apparently kicked out of WOOHP by Jerry years ago._

She sighed. _Add to all that my having to search through all the baggage I've built up since my last months at WOOHP, all this stuff about Sam being in Witness Protection, and this Paula Ackoff thing, and...  
_

 _And Rosa._

She winced at the memory, the latest unpleasant experience from the past to try and upset the fragile stability she'd made for herself since the shocking news earlier in the evening.

 _His dirty nails. To Clover, From Blaine. All My Love. He never said a word._

Clover sighed again, longer this time. That was something else she would have to remember, one day, when she found the courage to. Some unfinished business she had left from WOOHP, long before her life was turned upside down, tied, like Jerry, Sam, and Blaine, into this strange mystery of Gavin, the spy lurking at the highest levels of WOOHP.

* * *

A little girl, too excited to go to sleep, looked out her window.

There were two reasons for her present state of animation. For one, her father, who worked for an important group of people - or was it a group of important people? - had guests over for the evening, which was always a novel experience. Two of these guests were already somewhat familiar to her - one of them, a serene-looking woman with striking copper hair, was a co-worker of her father's named Diana, although for some reason he kept mispronouncing it "Dina". The other one was a special guest who had already been living with them since last week, around the beginning of the new year, and would continue to stay with them for some time - a tall, dreamy-looking man with a roguish smile named Deen or Deem or something, whom her mother and father seemed to not like too much but who seemed quite nice to her. He had read stories to her and, before her father found out and put a stop to it, told some of his own - enthralling adventures in faraway places, fun times with teenage friends interspersed with exciting fights against mean bad people.

But it was the other guests who had come that night that interested her the most. She knew nothing about them, although she planned - and would eventually forget - to ask her father the next morning. She had gotten a fleeting look at them earlier as they were coming into the house, peering curiously down at them from on top of the stairs before her mother quickly ushered her away. Now, from her window, she got a much longer, much better look at them as they prepared to leave.

She thought of them in terms of their hair color - brunette and blonde. The brunette had brown skin - sort of like hers, but not as dark - and wore her hair in a plain-looking bob cut. Her high heels, which went well with the professional, powerful-looking business suit she wore, clopped loudly as she walked down the stairs and towards her car, quickly, briskly, with a sense of having someplace to be - walking with a purpose, her mother would have said, had she seen it. As she opened the car door and slipped behind the wheel the girl got a good look at her face, and was surprised by how young it looked, for a woman who dressed and carried herself so admirably, like such a grown-up.

The blonde, on the other hand, was different, beginning with her hair and skin color, of course, but there were other differences too. She dressed more casually, but also more expressively, the clothes she was wearing practically screaming stylish and fashionable in perfectly chosen colors and exquisitely precise cuts. A lock of her golden hair hung sharply and becomingly over a corner of her forehead, while at the back it flared outward in a handsome golden fringe that shone divinely in the moonlight. She walked more slowly than the brunette, following her to the car with slow, measured steps. Her hands were thrust into her pockets and her head was down, and instinctively the girl was moved to compassionate pity for her, walking like she was carrying a heavy burden on her shoulders.

She watched as they both buckled themselves into the car, which promptly growled and came alive, headlights shining harshly in the darkness. Before long, their car had traveled out the gate and was making its way up the highway, followed by another car belonging to the Diana woman - both headed, she knew from her own frequent trips in that direction, to the big city.

She would follow them the next morning, and therein lay the second reason she was excited. She was of that age when one actually enjoys going to school, and that night was a school night - the first one after the end of Winter Break.


	14. Part Two: Alex's Mission

**Author's Note:** My sincere thanks to DemonsArePersonal, whose character Marie from her _Totally Spies!_ fanfic _Marie_ inspired one of the OCs in this chapter. Though I personally disapprove of Sam/Scam I nevertheless found the premise of her fic to be both interesting and promising, and I regret that it seems to have been discontinued.

 **Content Warning:** Adult language

* * *

 _ **Part Two: Alex's Mission**_

* * *

"It _has_ to be around here somewhere." **  
**

In the back of the car, Elise sighed as her mother began another circle around the school. They had been driving around for ten whole minutes already, and the elusive parking lot was still nowhere to be found. Staring at the back of her mom's seat, Elise could tell she was starting to get annoyed with how long it was taking them to find a place to park.

Elise's mood, as she watched her mother let out an impatient huff, was not much better. That was to be expected of a fourth-grader coming back from Winter Break, of course - too old to look forward to the resumption of school with excitement - but there were some other reasons for her glumness besides. For one, her family had just moved to this forgotten, out-of-the-way town just a few weeks ago, and Elise had been unwillingly parted from all her old friends and teachers in the process. Though her friends had promised to keep in touch and never forget her - and dreamy Dustin Taylor had taken a break from not noticing her to give her a heart-stopping goodbye hug - she knew what their promises were worth. It wouldn't take long for her to be reduced to an idle wondering - "How do you think Elise is doing? Having fun?" - and then forgotten altogether. Privately, she wondered, in her darker moments, whether it had already happened.

Another reason for her unhappiness could be found in the day's date - it was the _second_ school day after Break, not the first. The vestiges of a stubborn cold had kept Elise at home the day before, and as a consequence her first day at her new school had been pushed back one day. Her parents treated it like it was no big deal, but for her it was a cause of significant distress. If she had come on the first day after break she might have had an easier time fitting in, when everyone was still refamiliarizing themselves with school and cliques were still reasserting themselves after a long absence. On the second day, though, people would be back in the groove already, and old friendships would have already reformed, with no room for an outsider. She would be behind everyone else, academically and socially.

A sharp stab of fear coursed through Elise as she contemplated the last part of that thought. She was, by nature, a shy person, but not an unsociable one - she could be quite warm and animated around close friends, but had trouble making close friends - or any friends, for that matter - in the first place. Like all people with that cruel combination of traits, cursed to long for but not have, she had a great fear, not of being alone, but of being alone in a crowd. She would have no problem being the only student in a class, but being the only student in a class without a friend to talk to scared her beyond measure, and her arriving on the second day of school, after everyone else had gotten to know each other again, only seemed to make that outcome more likely.

"Screw it," her mother said in front of her, startling her out of her dreadful reverie. "We'll park on the curb. It's a narrow street, but I think we can fit. Just have to get out before more parents show up and clog up the road," she continued, more to herself now than Elise.

They pulled over and her mother extinguished the ignition before exiting quickly, impatiently. With a deliberate, nervous slowness, Elise grabbed her backpack and climbed out too, tucking a strand of straight blond hair behind her ear and surveying her new school for the first time. There was not a single person to be seen, which, combined with the open campus layout, had the effect of making the school seem like a ghost town. The fact that the sky was still dim with the hazy early morning light of January didn't help matters much.

"Why did we have to come so early?" Elise asked forlornly, as she slung her backpack on and began following her mother onto the campus. "We're the only ones here. It's so...weird."

"Well, sweetie, you have to meet your new teacher, get your books, and set up your desks, don't you?" Her mother pointed out, a trace of affection evident in her tone and in the slight upward quirk of her lips. "Can't do that during class, or you'll distract everyone else, and lose time on classwork."

Elise shrugged. "I guess," she said glumly, although the sight of her mother's smile emboldened her somewhat. As they made their way through an empty playground, wet drops of dew glistening on the metal and plastic of the play-structures, she asked, "How much longer do we have to walk?"

"Room 403, which should be...there!" Her mother pointed at a classroom jutting out of a lumpy central structure - one of several such classrooms, in fact, all sticking out like fat spokes on a squat wheel. Like the rest of the campus, it was painted in a plain shade of beige, save for the door, which was painted brown. A planter with a tall tree in it sat next to it, and a warm glow emanated from a window, giving Elise a peek of the neat, but empty, room inside.

They made their way to the door and Elise's mother was about to knock when it suddenly opened, swinging wide and almost hitting them before they quickly stepped out of its way. A draft of warm, dry air burst forth and enveloped them, and the sudden brightness made Elise blink a few times, causing her to initially miss the woman who stepped into the doorway to greet them.

When Elise refocused her gaze, she found herself peering up at a woman with a pleasant, kindly-looking face, covered with rich red hair that formed a prominent widow's peak and was tied into a thick, prim-looking bun on the back of her head. Her gentle green eyes swept over her curiously, but not invasively, and her smile was welcoming and warm.

And she was _young_ \- very young. Enough for Elise's mother, who was hardly old herself, to stop and do a double take after getting a good look at her. Elise had little experience with estimating people's ages, but if she had to guess she wouldn't have put her past thirty - quite a bit younger than all her previous teachers, most of whom had been solidly in their middle age. Come to think of it, it was younger than _any_ grown-up she knew, Elise realized, as she gave her a searching glance of her own. This new teacher looked like she had just stepped out of a fashion magazine for professional women, with her youthful good looks and her sophisticated getup - a stylish, sharp-looking purple blouse, complimented neatly by a smooth khaki skirt.

As she studied her, the teacher's smile widened and she held out her hand. "Good morning!" She said, in a cheerful-sounding voice that clashed entirely with how early it was. "I'm Miss Simpson. You must be Elise, isn't that right?"

Elise stared at her outstretched hand, confused. It wasn't often that grown-ups asked to shake her hand. Uncertainly, she took the proffered hand and gave it a few awkward, limp swings, mumbling a "Hi" as she did so.

If Miss Simpson felt as awkward as Elise did, she didn't let it show. Not missing a beat, she turned to Elise's mother, who promptly took her hand and gave it a single, firm shake. " _Samantha_ Simpson," she said, her smile having lost none of its warm luster. "Good morning, ma'am. How are you? Still settling into town?"

"Finished unpacking," Elise's mother said with feeling. Privately, Elise wondered if being called "ma'am" bothered her. "Doesn't quite feel like home yet, but give it time, right?" She asked, chuckling softly.

Miss Simpson laughed politely too, nodding knowingly. "I understand. It took me a while to adjust to this place when I first moved here, too."

Elise's mother smiled sympathetically, and for a moment Elise felt as if she was intruding on a personal moment between the two women, before her mother turned to her, bending down so that their faces were level with each other. Instinctively, her gut clenched. She knew what was going to happen next, and braced herself for the inevitable moment.

"Alright, sweetie, I have to get to work. Miss Simpson here will help you get settled in," she said, affection mixed with a hopeful cheer in her voice. "Take care of yourself, pay attention in class, and try to have fun, ok?"

"Sure," Elise said. "Yeah, I'll try."

Her mother smiled and kissed her on the forehead. "Good. Listen, I _know_ it will be tough, starting at a new school and having to make new friends. Just be patient and have a good attitude - you'll find a place here before long. Be brave, ok?" She said, straightening herself as she prepared to leave her behind in this strange new world.

For her part, Elise merely nodded mutely. Miss Simpson stepped forward, a confident and reassuring look on her face. "It was nice to meet you, ma'am," she said. "We'll take good care of her here, I promise you. You couldn't have picked a better school for her than Tuesbad."

* * *

Tuesbad. It was one of the few times she had heard anyone refer to her new school by its name. Oh, her parents had done it at first, when they were still explaining what would become of her after they moved, but gradually, as the idea became old, they had switched to just calling it "the school" or "the new school" and left it at that.

Her mother's footsteps were already receding in the distance when Elise stepped into Room 403, Miss Simpson following and closing the door behind them to keep the warm air in. She gave the room a brief once-over - a largish space with thirty wood-topped desks, arranged in two E-shapes that mirrored each other, once on each side of the room, leaving a narrow walkway between them from the back of the class to the whiteboard at the front. Colorful posters, illustrations, and motivational quotes adorned the wall, while the whiteboard at the head of the room looked invitingly blank. Tall bookshelves lined the sides of the back of the room, which opened up into the central structure that Elise had seen earlier, and from which the other classrooms in the building could be accessed.

"That's the Hub," Miss Simpson said, following her gaze. "There's one Hub per grade level, except for the first- and second-graders, who get stuck with the portables. We use them for inter-class activities sometimes, and supposedly we'll have small rehearsals for the class - the entire fourth-grade class, I mean - musical in there as well. Usually it's just the teachers using it for conferences, though."

She looked down at her and smiled, and Elise was torn between taking a step back or returning her grin. In the end, she did neither, merely following Miss Simpson as she led her to an empty desk at the back of one of the E formations. A single name tag was taped to the top of the desk in the upper-left corner, bearing her name scrawled in an elegant cursive script.

"Here's your desk." Elise pulled out the chair, set her bag down, and settled herself in. The seat was rough blue plastic, but mercifully low enough so that her feet didn't dangle above the floor like a third-grader. "If it's too far from the board, just let me know, but otherwise I think you should be fine here. Why don't you unpack your things, and I'll get you your textbooks from the back."

Elise nodded and watched as Miss Simpson made her way to a bookshelf, pulling several thick textbooks off after first checking to see that they weren't falling apart. For her part, Elise herself shoved her meager school supplies - a pencil pouch and a small stack of notebooks - into her desk in a heartbeat, and took a moment to study the room some more.

Closets - staplers - an overhead projector hanging dangerously from the ceiling, linked to a fancy new document camera on a table at the front - Miss Simpson's own desk, tucked next to a window - it was almost like Elise's old fourth-grade classroom, except that it just wasn't. She sighed audibly as Miss Simpson made her way back to her desk, carrying a foreboding stack of worn tomes and shiny new workbooks in her arms, and briefly she felt a wave of pained, mournful loss and nostalgia wash over her before receding, slowly and regretfully.

Her new teacher deposited her load on her desk with a loud _thump_ and crouched down next to Elise, looking up at her with a sympathetic expression on her face. "Is something the matter?" She asked, not unkindly. Her green eyes were wide and earnest, and Elise, for a heartbeat, was struck by how rich and deep they looked, like emeralds shining on ivory, and how well they complemented her red hair.

"Just- just a little nervous, I guess," she said, half-muttering. I've never switched schools before.

Miss Simpson nodded, a subtle understanding evident in the movement of her head. "I can relate," she said softly. "It's my first year at this school, too."

Elise raised her eyebrows. "It is?"

"Yeah." A faraway look entered Miss Simpson's eyes, and for a moment her gaze flickered away from Elise to focus on nothing in particular. "I moved here...almost a year ago, now. It's my first year at Tuesbad - my first year teaching, in fact. It's...taken some getting used to." She sighed, and Elise had never heard so much frustrated, unexpressed - even secret - sentiment compressed into a single gesture. Before long, she found herself wondering what Miss Simpson was thinking, what she left behind to come to Tuesbad, and whether she was as lonely as Elise feared she might become herself, and if the answers to any of those questions were things she might be able to understand.

In the meantime, a calm silence fell between them for a moment, and Elise felt a dull but genuine affinity for her new teacher as she watched her contemplate something hazy and nebulous - just like what Elise imagined she, herself, looked like when she thought about her own old school and her old friends who had probably forgotten her by now. In that moment, she felt a peculiar kinship with Miss Simpson - both of them strangers to Tuesbad, far from home, and on their own. It was hard not to relate, and despite everything Elise found herself liking her for the loner's bond they shared.

As if she knew what she was thinking, Miss Simpson looked up and rested a compassionate hand on her shoulder, giving it a firm but gentle squeeze. "Hang in there," she said reassuringly. "We'll make it through this, won't we? Together." She smiled. "I've made it through almost one semester, and you can too. Things will turn out alright. You'll see." She paused for a moment. "If you ever need...a friend, or someone to talk to...about settling in here, fitting in, you can always come to me."

Miss Simpson stood up. "Hey, I should ask - have you been around campus yet? Do you know where things are - where the cafeteria is, or the computer lab, or anything like that?"

Elise shook her head. "No, actually. I- this is my first time at this school. On this campus."

Her teacher checked her watch, then looked back down at Elise, a thoughtful look on her face. "Well, you know, we still have over twenty minutes until the first bell rings. Would you like a tour of the school? In my experience, when you're going to new places, it's always handy to scout out the premises first." Something flickered over her eyes - a shadow, dark and secretive - but it passed over so quickly Elise doubted whether she'd actually seen it. "You might save yourself from some...unexpected surprises."

"If you're expecting it, it's not a very good surprise," Elise said skeptically, crossing her arms.

Miss Simpson laughed - a mellifluous and girlish sound, still carrying the traces of happy youth. "No, I guess not," she conceded. "Still - you up for it?"

Elise shrugged and hopped off her chair. Miss Simpson smiled at her again, and for the first time that day, Elise smiled back.

* * *

And so, on her first day at Tuesbad, Elise made a friend. Their shared newness allowed them to form a connection in a way only possible for strangers in a crowd of friends, a common understanding based on a mutual discomfort with an unfamiliar environment. But that same newness also made it difficult for them to connect with those who had already been at the school for some time, for whom Tuesbad might as well have been a second home.

In time, Sam thought, Elise would come to feel that isolation, although on a much more limited scale, seeing as she spent the majority of her school day in class with other students. If she tried hard and was lucky she would make new friends at Tuesbad, and gradually the cold, persistent shock of moving to a new school, of being the new kid, would fade away and become a distant memory.

Sam envied Elise, in all honesty. She had that opportunity; Sam didn't. She spent the entire day as the only adult in her classroom, save for the rare instances when one of the other fourth grade teachers would poke their head into her class and ask to borrow something or other. Those other teachers were known to her, but mostly by last name only, and the rest of the teaching staff was a mystery entirely. The most she saw of them was in the mornings, when they were parking their cars, walking to class, and lining up to use the Hub Four's only copy machine, and in the staff meetings the fourth grade teachers had once a week, as well as the wider faculty meetings held in the library once a month. She ate her lunches in her classroom instead of the teachers' lounge, where, among other things, her extreme youth and consciousness of being "the new girl" made her feel uncomfortable and just a little unwelcome.

In truth, she wasn't unwelcome at all. If anything, her colleagues had been quite curious about her at the beginning of the school year, and had tried to appear hospitable and accommodating to her. At first they had made frequent trips to her room after school, either alone or in groups, some bearing gifts of school supplies or food and drink and all bringing well-meaning, rather basic questions for small talk - where are you from? Where did you get your degree _-_ oh, I'm sorry, _degrees_? How'd you end up in public ed? But her answers, though polite and delivered with a warm, ready smile, had always been short, somewhat evasive, and not very satisfying, and gradually they had taken the hint and ceased their visits to her room, while she, mistaking their courtesy for hostility, withdrew from them in turn.

That didn't mean they didn't still think about her occasionally, however, either privately or in groups. Mrs. Ford-Hansen, who taught the second grade, was impressed at the quite incredible agility and coordination she had displayed at the student-teacher dodgeball game in November, just before Thanksgiving Break, where she had lasted the entire match - all forty-five minutes of the lunch period - without being hit once, while single-handedly knocking out a third of the student team, leading Ford-Hansen to wonder whether she had once been an athlete or martial artist of some kind. Mrs. Carmichael, who ran the computer lab and occupied the parking space across from Sam's, observed her stumbling out of her car one morning, her makeup and hair in disarray, moaning softly to herself and rubbing at her temples before starting off for her room on unsteady feet. Recognizing the telltale signs of a hangover, she had shared the incident with her circle of friends, and somehow the story spread that the new teacher was a raging alcoholic. And Mr. Massey, who taught in Room 402 next to Sam and was, at the tender age of 29, the third-youngest teacher at Tuesbad, found himself occasionally - _occasionally_ , mind - trying to picture what she looked like with her hair down. Not noticing any rings on her fingers, he sometimes debated whether he ought to ask for her number, both with himself and with his own clique in the teacher's lounge.

The last time he had posed the question to them was in December, just before the students and staff departed on Winter Break. They had been huddled around the beat-up, ancient sofa in the corner, and all of them groaned when he asked for their counsel.

"Oh for God's sake, Massey, not this again. How many times do we have to tell you? 'You don't dip your pen in the company ink.'"

Massey glared. "You got that from _Friends_." Mr. Wou's predilection for the sitcom was well-known among the faculty.

For his part, Wou had shrugged nonchalantly. "Even so. You don't date someone you work with - _especially_ ," he said, cutting off Massey's protest, "if you work in the same department. Or grade, in your case. Either way, you want to keep the awkwardness _out_ of the workplace. So keep your pen in your drawer, if you catch my drift."

They had all groaned again, this time at Wou, who took another sip of his coffee and chuckled softly to himself.

Massey, however, had been undeterred. "But she's _hot!_ "

At that point, the men in their group had sighed, half in exasperation but also half in agreement, while the women among them scoffed. _Men_ , they all thought.

"Even more reason you shouldn't do it," one of them had scolded. "All you see is a pretty face. For all you know she could already have a boyfriend. Or be a lesbian. Or be a drunk, like Rhonda and her friends say. Look, Massey, honey," she said, her voice dripping with ironic sweetness, "speaking as a woman, _don't_ move on a girl when you don't know anything about her. It would save us a _lot_ of trouble, believe me." Her female colleagues nodded in concurrence.

"Well, no one knows anything about her!" Massey had exclaimed defensively, and to their surprise they had all been forced to agree with him on that.

* * *

As much of an enigma as Sam might have been to her colleagues, however, her students, with the wise pretensions of childhood, imagined they knew her pretty well. To them, she had all the qualities which commanded respect - a constant energy and enthusiasm, undiminished even after four long months; an engaging and encouraging teaching manner, which inspired the normal students, cut down on the annoying showings-off of the teacher's pets, and even compelled the positive participation of the quiet wallflowers; and, of course, her the sheer breadth of her knowledge, which never ceased to amaze them with genuinely interesting facts in History and Science, profound insights in Reading, and brilliant solutions to devilish problems in Math.

Of course, only the first of these qualities was evident on the first day of school, when, they all remembered, Miss Simpson had stumbled her way through almost the entire day, brimming with tense energy, sweating visibly, and clearly not having any idea what she was doing, even talking nervously to herself on occasion. By the end of the second week of school (and, the gossips whispered, after a lunchtime visit from the principal, Mr. Corley), however, their new teacher had found her way, and gradually they came to like her. For them, she was both a good and a fun teacher to have - even more so than Mr. Massey, whose class had previously been the most sought-after among incoming fourth-graders - and they appreciated her intelligence and kind, pleasant, and even sometimes humorous attitude.

Now, it is common - especially in the higher levels of education - for students to try to take advantage of teachers with such warm and compassionate personalities. It certainly happened with Mr. Massey, who sometimes let his students get away with things that they shouldn't have. But Miss Simpson's students respected her in a way that extended beyond mere admiration, and which approached an emotion that, in a different context, would be called fear.

There were two reasons for this transcendent level of regard and esteem. The first was an incident some time in October. By then they had all gotten accustomed to their new teacher and believed that they had her all figured out. One day, when Miss Simpson had been out of the room using Hub 4's copy machine, Lowell Crocker, one of the class's most devious (and yet, perversely, most well-liked) troublemakers, spotted a discarded copy of that week's upcoming math test in her recycling bin. Being a natural opportunist and entrepreneur, he had proceeded to snatch up the paper and cram it into a pocket before she returned, and during recesses, lunch, and after school he had offered sneak previews of the test for five bucks a minute, no cell phones allowed. That night several kids from Room 403 tried desperately to remember the problems they had seen and figure out solutions, while Lowell slept soundly, answers already written on his salvaged copy and fifty more dollars in his wallet. But the next day the test Miss Simpson passed out bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been fished out of the recycling bin.

"You can look at this one for free," Miss Simpson said, just a little smugly, before sitting down at her desk and placing a highly passive-aggressive call to Crocker residence, making no effort to lower her voice as she did so. From that day on, her students understood her to have a deep and knowledgeable understanding of the criminal mind, and were quick to restrain themselves from cheating and other academically-dubious activities, not wanting to share poor Lowell's fate. And Sam, for her part, breathed a little easier and enjoyed the surge of triumph she felt, reveling in the knowledge that she had taught her class a lesson they would never forget.

The second reason was another incident that had taken place around the beginning of December. A homeless man, sporting disheveled facial hair, clad in grime-covered old clothes, and reeking of filth, had wandered onto campus from the nearby public park without any obstruction whatsoever, courtesy of Tuesbad's aesthetically- and environmentally-pleasing open campus layout. For whatever reason, he thought that the spot right in front of Room 403 would be a nice place to urinate, prompting Miss Simpson to leave class for a few moments to ask him to leave.

They had watched her confront the man from the window, many leaving their desks to get a better view. It had started well enough - the man gave her an exaggerated bow as she approached, prompting a few giggles, and Miss Simpson gave him a bill of unknown denomination as a peace offering, which everyone thought was characteristically kind of her. But somehow the conversation became heated, as the man began flailing his arms and stamping his feet at a nonexistent provocation, shouting in the incoherent, broken ramblings of the longtime dispossessed and destitute, and before they knew it the man had lunged for her, a rough, paw-like hand clad in tattered gloves grasping aggressively for her thin arm.

The girls gasped and the boys shouted in alarm and interest. The braver students briefly considered running out to help her, and prove their heroism and courage to their teacher and classmates in the process. None of them were quite certain how Miss Simpson would be able to respond to protect herself - or if she was even capable of such in the first place. Thus it was with considerable amazement that they watched Miss Simpson not only keep her composure, save for a slight widening of the eyes, but deftly sidestep the clumsy attack with a graceful ease and quickness. Dropping low, she stuck out her leg and swept it in broad, swift arc, knocking the man's legs out from under him and sending him faceplanting into the ground.

Miss Simpson stood back up and straightened out her skirt, but the intruder wasn't finished. Shoving himself to his feet with a groan, and with a slightly-deranged snarl on his face, he had fished in his clothes and pulled out a pocketknife, scratched and rusty but still sharp. The girls shrieked and turned away from the window, and the boys who had been ready to join the fight hastily reconsidered their decision. They were all afraid - even Jerome Tynan, the hero of the class, and Lowell, who still bore the vestiges of a grudge, had been scared, watching from the window with rapt, dreadful attention.

But Miss Simpson showed no fear - if anything, she seemed unimpressed, putting her hands on her hips and sighing in annoyance. She waited for him to make the first move - a quick slash - before seizing the homeless man's armed wrist with one arm and spinning herself into him, slamming the elbow of her other arm into the man's nose with a swift, fluid blur of motion. The intruder's nose crumpled with a spurt of blood and a sickening crunch, and he dropped the knife (which Miss Simpson was quick to kick away) and fell onto his back, grasping at his broken nose and spouting a stream of inarticulate babble, which he periodically interspersed with scandalous shouts of obscenities. A few minutes later Mr. Corley had arrived, with the school security officer in tow, and after checking to see that Miss Simpson was alright (which she was, really, not a scratch, my shoulder's ok, believe me) they had hauled the man to his feet and dragged him off to the Office, which was the last they ever saw of him.

That day, after school, the students had regaled their parents and friends from other classes with their own accounts of the encounter, the menace and craziness of the homeless man and the awesomeness of Miss Simpson growing with each retelling. The parents, taking the path of least resistance, had been quick to determine that Miss Simpson, like many single young women, had taken a self-defense class or two, and the most generous of them allowed for a possible background in martial arts. The students, however, were generally discontent with such a simple and unimaginative explanation, and quickly engaged in wild speculation. Before long, rumors had spread among the fourth-grade class that before she came to Tuesbad Miss Simpson had been something quite extraordinary _-_ a special forces commando, perhaps, or possibly a vigilante crime-fighter, or maybe even a secret agent or a spy.

* * *

Mr. Corley, however, did not believe any of these outlandish suggestions. But in all honesty he himself had only a slightly better idea of what she was like before she arrived at his school. Over the course of the semester his initial uneasiness about her, and more specifically about the mysterious aura of restraint and concealment around her, had faded somewhat, as she proved to be as competent and reliable as he had thought she might be. But it had never dissipated entirely. Over his years he had met more than his fair share - more than several people's fair shares - of pretenders, dissemblers, and frauds, peddling degrees from unaccredited universities and boasting resumes riddled with falsehoods, who nevertheless managed to put on quite an impressive performance, faking it until they made it - or were exposed, whichever came first.

To him, Samantha Simpson might have been one of those people. Then again, she might not. It was very strange for Corley. She had been all but thrown at him by the school district. She was incredibly young - this year would be her twenty-fourth birthday, making her the youngest teacher in the school by far. She was fresh out of college, yet she had all the necessary licenses and certifications and experience that took most teachers at least a few years to accumulate. She didn't mix with the other teachers, and somehow word had gotten around that she drank a lot on the side, though to Corley had never seen any proof of that. And no one really knew anything about her.

She was a good teacher - her endearingly awkward first day aside, of course. Her students adored her, and their grades were well above the minimum standards for the fourth-grade department, so she was clearly doing _something_ right. She had shown herself to be quite the athlete, and the way she handled the armed intruder situation...that was something else.

Was she demon or angel? Devil or saint? Incredibly-gifted conwoman or an exceptionally-driven teacher? Corley had trouble believing the latter - he thought back to their one and only interview, and how she seemed to exhibit great passion for journalism and discovery and investigatory things in general, but not so much for teaching and education. With that and everything else in mind, Mr. Corley found himself leaning towards the side of suspicion rather than that of good faith, which was why, just before the school let out for Winter Break, he had placed a call to a Mr. Amble, proprietor of a local agency.

"What exactly do you want to know?" Amble had inquired, with a polite but trying languor.

"Well, nothing _exactly._ Just that - well, when I ask for a resume, I like it to be complete. And true, all the way."

"And you think hers is incomplete? Or fudged?"

He had hesitated. "There may be a possibility of that, yes."

They had resumed their conversation three weeks later, after school on the first day after Break.

"Good girl," Amble remarked tersely. Over the phone Corley could hear a TV in the background, but couldn't tell what was playing.

"You make her sound like a teenager."

"Yeah, well, not too long ago she was one. And next to the average age of your staff, she might as well still be. I bet some of you have kids older than her, for crying out loud."

"Alright, alright, alright. Enough of that."

"Look, it's all in the report I gave you. I don't know what else you want."

"I want some clarification on...on a lot of points. You wrote - let me read it to you - 'Multiple purchases of prescription analgesic drugs from February through April'. Does she have a problem or something? She's not popping pills or anything, is she?"

A long pause, then, "Not that I can tell. The purchases stopped in April, so unless she's got another supplier she should be clean right now. My guess is she had surgery or something before she came here, and needed the painkillers to handle the recovery."

"Do you know what she had surgery for?"

"No idea," Amble said cheerfully. "Like I said, it's just my guess."

Corley frowned. "Well, how about this - 'No known presence on social media'. That's strange, isn't it?"

"A little," Amble admitted. "Everyone's on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever these days. But hey, for all I know, that just means she doesn't like distractions - which matches with just about everything else I know about her. Like I said, she's a good girl. Hard worker."

Corley was about to come up with a retort, but Amble preempted him. "Look, she's pure as 24-karat gold, ok? Not a single black spot on her record. All her documentation checks out - _all_ of it, from high school to college, and at all the non-profits and student teaching gigs she's had. Everything adds up."

"Except for this," Corley said, seizing the opportunity with a heady excitement. "'Frequent unexcused absences in high school, often in the middle of the school day'."

"So she cut class in high school. Big deal. Everyone does it. And it was in _high school_ , for Christ's sake. That was like - eight years ago. Nine. Ten."

"It wouldn't be a big deal, if it wasn't followed by this: 'Frequent unexplained absences in college, often in the middle of the instruction period' - that is, in the middle of the school day."

" _Again_ , lots of people skip class in college. Don't tell me you've never done it."

"Oh, I've done it. But _I've_ never had to pull off a double major while ditching left and right. How the hell did she have the time for Journalism and Elementary Ed with crappy attendance?"

"Maybe she studied outside of class - she seems like the type. Or maybe the classes were easy - it _is_ Malibu University we're talking about here, remember? If it bothers you so much, you can ask her yourself."

"But I can't just do that. She'll wonder how I knew she was cutting class all the time. Which is why I hired you - _you're_ supposed to be figuring this shit out, damn it, not me. For the ridiculous fee you charge, you're not that helpful, you know that?"

Abruptly, the TV playing in the background clicked off, and Corley heard Amble take a long breath before replying. "Maybe so. But hey, what can I say? I specialize in jealous husbands and wives, not background checks, or whatever the hell this is. Look, all her documentation is there - transcripts, theses, everything. She was a good student, she studied hard, worked hard, got good internships, did all the good shit. I don't know what else you want. You wanted a replacement for your dead teacher, you got a replacement. You wanted someone qualified, you got qualified."

Corley ground his teeth in irritation. "All the same, I want someone with impeccable credentials. With impeccable - _uprightness_." He took a breath of his own. "You say she skipped class all the time. Fine. What did she do in that time? While she wasn't in school, I mean?"

"Got drunk. Fucked half the school. Did fifty-six different kinds of drugs. I don't know. If it was bad, no one ever caught her at it. And who's to say what she was doing was bad? She could have been studying, like I said. Or shopping. Hell, for all I know, she could have been traveling across the globe, taking in the sights and becoming a 'woman of the world', or whatever. God knows she can afford it. Her family can, anyways."

"Well, she was somewhere," Corley muttered morosely. "And wherever the hell she was, she was doing something."


	15. Part Two: Chapter One

_**Part Two: Alex's Mission**_

 _ **I**_

* * *

Clover was woken, once again, by the sound of the Martinez family going about their morning next door. Unlike the previous day, though, she woke up alone, and with no hangover twisting her mind, although there was something arguably much heavier weighing on it instead. As a consequence, the ruckus made by Mr. Martinez and his lazy brat kid bothered her much less than it would have otherwise, and she was able to shower, dress, and do her makeup painlessly, which was always welcome.

After tucking the last of her brushes back inside her makeup drawer, she checked herself one last time in the mirror, catching the bewildered look in her own eyes and wondering again what the hell she had gotten herself into, and how the hell she was supposed to do it. After a few moments of hopeless, unproductive staring, she sighed loudly and stood up, making her way to her modest kitchen. If she was ever going to catch the spy inside WOOHP, she certainly wasn't going to do it on an empty stomach.

She was walking down a small hallway, listening to the din coming from the Martinez's apartment next to hers, when she heard the sound of footsteps in her living room. Panic seized her, but also curiosity, and at once instincts from over a year ago, from a past life, kicked in, and she flattened herself against the wall, shimmying slowly and quietly until she was able to carefully peek her head around the corner.

It was Dina, pacing slowly back and forth, a contemplative look on her face. Clover sighed disgustedly, surprising her as she stepped out into the open. "How the-" she began, before catching sight of the Multi-Function Charm Bracelet on her wrist. _Ah._ _Figures_.

"You too, Dina? Breaking in? While I'm still inside?" She asked hotly, placing her hands on her hips and glowering at the intruder before her. "Creepy much?"

To her credit, Dina had the decency to offer an apologetic smile. "Sorry," she said softly.

Clover rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she said, and moved into her kitchen to try and make something to eat. She could still hear Dina's footsteps on the floor, her pumps clacking against the tiles, and the shuffling of chairs next door as young Rudy Martinez prepared to leave and catch the bus. "Mind telling me what you're doing here?"

"Just...inspecting the premises."

Clover took a box of cereal out from a cupboard and shook it, judging from the rattle that there was enough for at least one more breakfast. "What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Dina listened as Rudy Martinez placed his breakfast plate in the sink, shouted goodbye to his dad, and went out the door, the sounds of each action carrying into Clover's apartment with considerable clarity. "Alex mentioned that your apartment had...rather thin walls. She said you complained a lot about hearing your neighbors every morning. I came to see if that was true."

"Well, now you've heard it for yourself," Clover said, as she dumped the remaining cereal into a bowl. "Be glad that _you_ don't live here."

"Quite," Dina muttered, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Alex was right. It is as I feared - your apartment is altogether far too insecure for you to live in while you're conducting this investigation. The thin walls would be heaven for eavesdroppers, and the locks on your door are practically a red carpet for any burglars, if the ease with which I broke in is any indication."

Clover poured milk into her bowl. "Who's going to break in?" She asked dismissively, not bothering to look up. "Aside from you and Alex, of course," she added as an annoyed afterthought.

"WOOHP agents," Dina replied, "if they figure out what we're up to. And that's assuming ETOKA doesn't beat them to it."

Clover frowned. "What? That doesn't make sense. Why would WOOHP try to put _me_ under surveillance?"

"Because Gavin the spy is a senior leader in WOOHP, if Dean is to be trusted. And if Gavin wants you under surveillance, or gone, he has the authority to command WOOHP agents to do it for him, with no one the wiser as to his true motives." Dina sat down on a chair. "You have to understand, Clover - WOOHP is the enemy now, as it were. As long as Gavin remains where he is WOOHP is essentially in ETOKA's pocket. Anything that the Syndicate wants done, Gavin can get WOOHP to do it for them. And that includes putting you under surveillance, or even detaining and interrogating you."

"No - I meant, why would WOOHP suspect me in the first place? I haven't had anything to do with them for over a year."

Dina shrugged. "Dean. It's rather well-known that you're one of his friends, I think. If ETOKA or WOOHP tracks him back to LA, they might consider keeping an eye on you or questioning you, to see if you two have been in contact. That holds for Alex too," she said contemplatively, more to herself than to Clover. "Either way, it wouldn't hurt to look over your shoulder every now and then from now on. If Gavin and ETOKA are hunting for Dean - which they are - they might very well be hunting for you, too."

She listened to Mr. Martinez as he turned on the faucet and hummed a tune as he began washing the dishes, then shook her head with finality. "And if they _do_ suspect you, you can't stay here. We need to move you somewhere else. Somewhere more...secure. Where no one would think to look."

"What?" Clover's head snapped up. Her mouth opened, initially to object, but she caught herself before any words escaped. If Dina was offering an alternative to her lousy apartment, she'd jump on it.

"Where?" She asked instead, grabbing a spoon and sitting herself down at her kitchen table.

Dina smiled. "Eat up, then pack your bags. I know a good place."

* * *

The Hotel Islay was, from one point of view, not a good place.

It was quite possibly the seediest, shadiest hotel Clover had ever seen in her life. The Islay looked like something out of a movie set, if the movie being shot was a really, _really_ dark noir or detective film. Located somewhere in the unholy buffer zone between the flash and glamor of Downtown and the beat-up, faux-suburban neighborhoods of East LA, the hotel boasted a two-star rating on the cracked neon sign over its front door, which Clover found extremely suspect. Cages covered the windows of the first two floors, and faded green paint was peeling off of the walls in unflattering places. It was, Clover thought, a place a _bad guy_ would hang out at, not someone like her.

But, Dina insisted, as she dragged a stubbornly-refusing, crestfallen Clover from the car by the arm, the Islay was a _secure_ place, and which made it a good place for Clover to base her investigation. The proprietor, a wizened old crone named Romero, apparently provided a safe house service for the LAPD and was accordingly well-versed in the arts of secrecy and discreet observation, skills which would be invaluable in keeping Clover's presence hidden and detecting any undercover WOOHP surveillance teams that came snooping around.

Clover didn't care about any of that, being too hung up on the tragic interior design of the hotel - nauseous fluorescent lights, cracked linoleum tiling, ancient wallpaper - and her regret for her own life decisions to pay much attention. As far as she could tell, the only differences between the hotel room she now occupied and the apartment she vacated was the room was way smaller, and that the walls were marginally thicker than in her old place. Evidently thick enough, according to Dina, to give any WOOHP eavesdroppers a rough time, assuming they could get past the eagle-eyed Mrs. Romero and her (dimwitted, but far more perceptive than he seems, trust me Miss Clover!) receptionist Marcus in the first place.

There was another difference, Clover realized, as she looked out the window. Her room, located as it was on the top floor, had quite the view, something her old place lacked. It framed the skyline of Downtown LA like a picture, with WOOHP Headquarters itself looming prominently in the middle, the globe-and-W emblem near the top of the building easily visible over the neighboring skyscrapers. It was something to think about, offering some perspective - or pressure, she wasn't sure which - on the task at hand.

She watched WOOHP from her faraway perch for some time, as Dina finished bringing her suitcases up - she hadn't offered to help at all, having been too shocked and indignant at the state of the hotel to do so - and Mrs. Romero tidied up the room, which looked like it hadn't seen an occupant in some time. She thought of Alex, working on the tenth floor, directing what was left of the Spies, fighting the good fight as best she could with limited personnel, resources, and support from the upper floors. She thought of Blaine, now Head of WOOHP Central Command, whatever that really meant, and wondered whether his new title came with a new office, and where it might be located. She thought of Jerry's office, high up on the thirtieth floor, and wondered whether Patrick Alister had made any changes to the decor. It sounded like something he would do, to erase any trace of the predecessor he'd loathed - and who had loathed him - so intensely.

The door to the room shut, and Clover shook herself out of her thoughts. Dina sighed loudly and sank into an armchair, talking about more security procedures - burner phones, VPNs - that would keep them safe from the Syndicate or WOOHP's prying eyes. Clover paid no attention, though she did briefly grimace in disgust at the positively ancient flip phone Dina set on the room's tiny desk. To her, all the practices and procedures Dina insisted on - including moving in the first place, now that she thought about it - seemed incredibly unnecessary, driven as they were by the unlikely possibility of WOOHP or ETOKA discovering what she was up to.

Eventually, mercifully, Dina left her to "finalize arrangements with Mrs. Romero" or whatever, and for the first time that day Clover was left alone in silence. With a loud sigh she plopped herself down on the room's dingy old bed and stared blankly up at the ceiling. The enormity of her mission occurred to her again, its gravity magnified by the sight of WOOHP Headquarters in the distance, peering through the window, and Clover felt a nauseous twisting of her gut and an overpowering feeling of loathing and fear for the task at hand.

 _How did I get myself into this again? What am I doing here? What am I even supposed to_ do _?_

With a groan of frustration she sat up on the bed and buried her face in her hands. She had to find Gavin, but in truth she hadn't the slightest clue of how, or where to even start. Fighting bad guys who worked in the shadows and hid in their secret lairs was one thing, but how did you fight one who was not only hidden right in front of your eyes, but worked a 9 to 5 job at one of the most powerful police and spy agencies in the world? If Gavin only had ETOKA on his side Clover wouldn't feel too bad about her chances, but with the might of WOOHP standing behind him too she felt very, very small indeed - a David without a sling, facing a faceless, titanic Goliath.

She stood up and paced the room anxiously for a few minutes, trying to think of a plan but only facing the assault of yet more fears and doubts. In exasperation, she gave up and decided to unpack the clothes, toiletries, and assorted electronics she'd brought with her, hoping it would take her mind off of her mission for a minute. She closed the drapes on the window, hiding WOOHP from her sight and herself from the responsibility she'd accepted.

* * *

In the Islay's lobby, Dina wrote out Oscar Goodluck's address on a dust-covered notepad.

"Send all your bills to this address. And this," she said, pulling a pristine hundred-dollar bill from her handbag, "is to keep her name off the guest ledger. No trace of her, understand?"

"No trace of whom, Miss Dina?" Mrs. Romero asked, demurely tucking the bill into her blouse. Dina smiled. She had met Romero several years ago when she had been involved with a detective in the LAPD, and without Romero's intervention she would never have realized that the man had been seeing other girls on the side. Since then the two of them had struck up an odd friendship, though how exactly it had happened was something Dina was never quite sure about. Nevertheless, she felt that she knew Romero well enough to trust her to keep her secrets, and whatever doubts she had about her discretion she knew she could assuage with a gift of a few hundred dollars here and there.

"I'll want to know everything," Dina said quietly, leaning over the counter. "When people come in, when people leave. Any new guests, and their lifestyles. That includes police and their witnesses, by the way."

"I don't work with the police," Romero replied neutrally.

"'Course you don't," Dina returned with a smile. "But even so - if your usual clientele comes in, keep an eye on them as well for me, would you? And finally," she said, putting as much gravity into her voice and importance into her look as she could, "most of all, I'll want to know about anyone asking questions about her, to you or your staff, under any pretext. I don't care if they say they're the LAPD, FBI, and WOOHP all rolled into one. If anyone starts snooping, you let me know, and you tell them nothing."

"It's only me and Marcus," Mrs. Romero said, indicating the gangly youth playing on his cell phone behind the counter, who stared back at her blankly. "And they won't get anywhere with you, will they, Marcus? No, you're too sensitive."

Dina nodded gratefully, thinking to herself that at one hundred dollars, Mrs. Romero and Marcus provided the cheapest security service in the business. With Clover now safely hidden away, her duties for the day were done, and she decided to head out for the day, sending a brief text message to Clover to let her know if she needed her.

* * *

As it turned out, unpacking _did_ take Clover's mind off of Gavin and WOOHP, and for a blessed hour and a half at that. If there was one thing she was good at it was arranging her outfits, a job which deserved every minute and every thought she put into it. The horrifically plain hotel room, with its dull, contrasting colors, was soon immeasurably brightened by the veritable rainbow of colors pouring out of the cramped closet in the wall, with skirts, pants, tops and dresses arrayed prettily within.

But even unpacking her wardrobe could only take so long, and before she knew it Clover was splayed on the bed again, staring hopelessly up at the ceiling. At length, she realized that, if she really wanted to, she _could_ go back and tell Oscar that she wouldn't - couldn't? - do the job. She would apologize for flaking, for bailing out at the last - or first - minute, but in the end it would be so simple, so _easy_ , to leave the responsibility behind, to run away from the impossible mission before her.

She could do it, if she really wanted to. And she did.

But as soon as she reached for her phone - _her_ phone, not that gross machine from the Dark Ages Dina had given to her - she could picture the crestfallen faces with perfect clarity: Oscar, Dina, Dean, and most of all Alex, their expressions twisted in disappointment and anger. And even, for a brief moment, Sam and Jerry too, their faces shimmering in her memory, hazy and just out of reach. _They would expect me to do this too, wouldn't they?_

She sighed mournfully, and slowly sat up on the bed. _I owe it to them. I do._

 _But what do I do? How do I start?_

Who could help her?

 _I have Dina outside WOOHP, and Dean too, but he needs to stay hidden for now. There's Oscar at the UN, and Alex inside WOOHP._ She paused for a moment. _Blaine...maybe Blaine, too? I haven't spoken to him since I left-_

 _But Dean and Alex were telling me - Blaine's the one leading the hunt for Dean now. Maybe he can't be trusted. Not yet._

 _But maybe if I got evidence, I could convince him to help out._

 _But how am I going to get evidence?_

The idea suddenly came to her, with an astonishing brilliance that surprised her immensely for how _simple_ it really was.

 _WOOHP records. Communications records. From last June._ It gradually dawned on her that it was a perfect place to start. The people staffing WOOHP's communications office kept meticulous records of the messages they sent and received - including who sent outgoing messages, and who the received messages were passed along to. If she could get a peek at the communications records from last June, she could see who received Dean's message about Saki, and who sent him the message stiffing him as well. And from there - who knew where the trail would lead?

But how to get a peek? She certainly wasn't welcome at WOOHP these days. But Alex was...

A heady excitement now seizing her for the first time in months, she grabbed the nasty old phone Dina had given her and, with much impatience and frustration, managed to tap out a text message to Alex, her fingers rapping clumsily against the archaic physical buttons. Within ten minutes she had gotten a reply - not surprising, considering how Alex said there wasn't a lot to do as Head of Spies these days.

 _Im breaking into woohp? Are u crazy?_

Clover laughed. "Is it really breaking in if they let you in, though?" She asked of no one in particular, and was about to say as much when another message from Alex came through.

 _comms office is on the same floor as central command. im not allowed up there w/o permission_

"Damn." Clover had forgotten about WOOHP's new getup, and failed to consider its effects on procedure and protocol. Back when she was Head of Spies and Jerry was still around she had enjoyed access to just about anything she wanted at WOOHP. She should have known that Patrick Alister, who had always hated the Spy Section, would have done away with that arrangement at the first opportunity.

She tapped out a reply. _lol make an excuse to go up or smth. or go thru the air vents. idc just get me pics of the records!_

A pause, then: _ill make an appt with central command. itll happen tomorrow._

Clover smiled and put the phone down, before snatching it back up again as a new thought suddenly occurred to her. She remembered all the times she'd been blindsided the previous night - Patrick's knighthood, Britney's firing, the traitor in WOOHP - and she decided that she was done with bombshells being dropped by her own friends and allies. If she was going to move forward with the hunt for Gavin - and by the looks of it, she was - there would definitely be a lot more surprises in store for her, and she'd rather they not come from her own side.

 _btw can u stop by_ \- she tried to remember the Islay's address, but couldn't and gave up - _the islay hotel when u get off work? need u to fill me in abt woohp reorganization and ppl whove left and other stuff thats changed. tyty_

Not waiting for a response, Clover tossed the phone onto the bed and leapt to her feet, feeling more emboldened, more _alive_ than she had in months. The ball was rolling, even though it was still early steps and she had no idea where it was going, and she felt like she had a goal again, a new mission, maybe even the most important mission of her life. Though the specter of her earlier uncertainty and fear still loomed deep inside her and threatened to spill over at the earliest setback or obstacle, her newfound plan, as frail as it was, gave her the confidence to overcome it and suppress it, at least for the moment.

With an airy feeling and - to her surprise - a genuine, hopeful smile on her face, she walked over to the window and threw the curtains open, gazing unafraid at WOOHP Headquarters in the distance.


	16. Part Two: Chapter Two

**_Part Two: Alex's Mission_**

 ** _II_**

* * *

 _50\. 51. 52. 53._

Alex leaned back in her chair, watching the seconds on the clock climb slowly upwards.

 _54\. 55. 56. 57._

It was 12 PM - or rather, would be in a matter of seconds - and on a normal day, at around this time, Alex would be typing away at her desk, trying not to fall asleep as the utter monotony of her day threatened to overtake her.

It hadn't always been like this. In fact, it had never been like before, which was what made it so jarring to Alex after she'd finally realized what she'd been forced into. When Jerry was still running the show Clover's tenure as Head of Spies had been relatively action-packed and exhilarating - sure, there was still plenty of paperwork to go through, what with all the reports to file, the gadgets to order, the confidential briefing materials to request, but the tedium was less then because, unlike now, the Spy Section was still regularly assigned missions back in those days, and no matter how tangled the red tape Clover could always count on there being an adventure at hand, places to go and bad guys to sock in the face, to take her mind off of the stale motions of the office and apply herself, body and soul, to making the world a safer place.

Needless to say, that was not the case anymore. These days she was downright surprised when she received instructions from Central Command to send a spy - or, when lightning struck twice, two - off to some faraway place to do some scouting. If they were lucky they could even get permission to perform a break-in and, if the powers that be were feeling extraordinarily generous, maybe even an arrest. But such events were rarer than limited edition designer handbags, and so Alex spent most of her time alternating between dozing at her desk, writing reports that would never be read, and staring at the clock, much like she was doing now.

Nothing happened in Spy Section anymore. It would have been easy to blame that on Patrick Alister, of course - it had been well-known that Jerry and him had butted heads over the Spies in the past, among other things. Patrick had started off in Agents Section, and the Men in Black had long resented having all the glory and credit being hogged by WOOHP's resident teenagers with their fancy gadgets and latex catsuits. As Patrick climbed the ranks at WOOHP he had brought the institutional rivalry with him, and when he had succeeded Jerry as Director in the aftermath of the Impeachment fiasco (which was, Blaine liked to say, the stupidest mission ever launched by an old man for one last glory) all of Spy Section had let out a collective shudder and braced themselves for the inevitable purge that, somehow, turned out to be so much worse than they expected.

Over time, however, by carefully listening to loose talk in the lobby, the parking garage, and the cafeteria, Alex had realized that what was happening with the Spies was happening all over the rest of WOOHP as well. The Agents, too, were sitting idle. The Operations Managers were complaining about only being allowed to run operations against the small fish in large criminal ponds, while the Investigators were understandably dissatisfied with the low quality of the information such operations produced - "chump change", one Investigator had remarked to a colleague standing in line for the lunchtime soda fountain. Even the Payroll Section, who were thoroughly removed from WOOHP's secret undertakings, were caught in the doldrums too - more than one payday had rolled by without checks being mailed out, due to the payroll clerks not having been given the authority to issue them. Almost all of WOOHP was frozen; nothing went in, nothing went out.

The exception to the rule was WOOHP Central Command, which seemed to always be busy. Gossip had filtered down to the rest of WOOHP from the Central Command offices on the upper floors - possible sightings of Rick Boring pulling another all-nighter to oversee a top-secret mission, unconfirmed reports of Tomas Eviline speaking in foreign languages to unknown persons over the phone, and contradictory accounts of Patrick Alister leaving his office, some said in a fury, others said delighted. And Blaine, of course, being his usual breezy self, slapping backs, telling jokes, and generally holding the team together with his spy's charm, energy, and enthusiasm.

Beyond that, no one seemed to know what Central Command was up to - WOOHP's most reclusive department took secrecy to a whole new level. But whatever it was doing, it was evidently making up for the rest of WOOHP's inactivity and then some - unlike Jerry, whose relationship with WOOHP's masters at the UN had grown colder and colder in the last disastrous months of his tenure, Patrick kept rising in their esteem. His knighthood was proof enough of that. Officially, it was for the tremendous job he did in reorganizing WOOHP and putting it back in business after Operation Impeachment. Unofficially, some whispered, it was for Magic - the ultra-sensitive operation he had run back when he was Deputy Director, and which was, to the best of anyone's knowledge, still running to this day. Alex knew precious little about Operation Magic - even in Central Command, it was said, only the highest officers, the members of the old Magic task force, were let in on the secret - but whatever information it was producing was, by itself, enough to compensate for the rest of WOOHP's moribund state, which was an impressive feat.

She had related all of this and more to Clover last night at the dingy hotel she was holed up at. Clover had reacted to the mention of Operation Magic - a sudden start of the eyes - but it was gone soon and Alex didn't think it was worth pursuing. In any case, Clover had seemed much more interested with Alex's final, comprehensive recounting of departures - all WOOHP personnel she could remember who had left for whatever reason. That was where Clover was now, actually - tracking down one such departure, while Alex was at WOOHP, about to do something that would, at the very least, get her fired without a pension.

If she was caught, of course.

Alex looked at the clock again. 12:01. Well, she'd be a little late, but that didn't matter.

She got up from her desk and left her office, walking through the tenth floor's silent hallways to the elevators. An Agent named Bill sat at a desk nearby - his job was security, checking the Spies in as they came and went and making sure no one who wasn't supposed to be on the tenth floor stepped off the elevator.

"Afternoon, Alex," he called out to her, stifling a yawn. "Out to lunch already?"

"Hi, Bill," she replied with a friendly wave. "I'm heading up to Central Command right now, actually. Can you give me a lift?"

Elevator travel in WOOHP Headquarters was not a simple matter of calling an elevator and selecting a floor. Elevators worked on keycards - every WOOHP employee was issued a keycard that, when scanned, allowed access only to certain floors. Alex's card, for instance, had access to the lobby, the underground parking garage, the Spy Section offices on the tenth floor, and the executive cafeteria on the twentieth floor - but those only. To see Central Command, she needed someone with access there to scan their card and send her up. Someone like Bill, for instance, who, as an Agent on building security duty, had free reign over all of WOOHP HQ, in case of an emergency or if he felt like abandoning his post and getting fired.

Bill smiled politely at her. "Sure. Who and where?"

"Ask for Louis Stackhall at Central Command, Finance Division."

Of course, it wasn't enough for the Agents to just send you up, Alex reflected as she watched Bill pick up his phone and dial. Someone had to _want_ you to come up in the first place, and Central Command, as a rule, didn't like to mix with the lower floors. But business was business, and sometimes there was no good reason to turn someone away.

"Head of Spies to see Mister Stackhall, please," Bill said into the phone. Alex hoped the people at Central Command were being nicer to him than they were to her. She had called Central Command earlier in the morning to set up a meeting with Louis, who, as a member of Central Command's Finance Division, was part of the team responsible for doling out operational funding to the Spies, Agents, Investigators, and Operations Managers - when they felt like it, anyways. It was a short phone call - Alex had been polite and friendly, weaving an elaborate fiction about needing more funds than the budget allowed for to replace some old gadgets. Louis had gotten down to business right away - "Yes, Alex, what can we do for you?" - and had ended by grudgingly admitting, "I suppose I could spare thirty minutes for you". The implication was clear: _We at Central Command have more important things to do than deal with you._

Whether Bill caught that subtext, though, was another story. His expression remained innocent and unassuming as he listened to whoever was on the other line. "Seems legit," he said as he hung up. "Give me a sec. I'll fill out a pass for you and scan you up."

"Thanks," Alex said. She accepted the paper card Bill gave her and stood by the elevator, waiting for it to come up. It came, she stepped in, and Bill tapped his own keycard against the scanner and selected the button for the twenty-fifth floor. "There you are, miss," he said, holding the door open like a courteous gentleman. "Nice barrette, by the way. It looks good on you."

"Thanks," Alex said again, self-consciously touching the barrette clipped to her hair. The doors closed, the elevator began to move, and she looked down to examine the pass she'd been given. The back was stamped with the date and time, as well as Bill's name. The front was more impressive. "PERMIT TO ENTER CC", it said. "Purpose of Visit: Finance Division. Please Return This Document Upon Leaving." At the bottom was a blank space, marked "Host's Signature/Date/Time Out".

The elevator stopped and she stepped out. Louis Stackhall was there to greet her, a five-foot-four giant, wearing a sweater-vest under his suit and, Alex suspected, standing on tiptoe.

"Afternoon, Alex," he said, wearing a difficult smile on his face. "A little late, but that's okay. Right this way."

"Sorry, Louis," Alex said, with more contrition than she felt. "Busy day. You know how it is."

Louis gave her an incredulous look but otherwise kept silent. The Agent manning Central Command's elevators examined her pass and signed her in. They made their way into Central Command proper, which was a rare experience for Alex, who could count the number of times she'd been up here before on one hand. Cavernous rooms crammed with cubicles and overwhelmed by silence sat next to conference rooms with tinted, grayed-out windows and massive halls filled with tables covered with maps and charts. Operations Managers and Investigators crowded the halls, having a hundred quiet conversations that abruptly ended when they saw the stranger in their midst. Secretaries and assistants flitted back and forth, carrying folders and binders marked with strange labels that she couldn't even begin to guess the meaning of. Locked doors were everywhere - open doors were literally breaking the rules. Walking through its halls, Alex couldn't help but feel like the new kid at school, or like a tourist in a foreign land.

"My gosh," she exclaimed, as they passed a desk-sized office printer with six output trays. It was a massive thing that dwarfed anything they had on the tenth floor. "How long have you had that thing?"

Louis chuckled. "You really are a stranger, aren't you?" He said, with a condescending humor in his tone. "Saves an incredible amount of man-hours," he went on, while Alex wondered if anyone besides Louis really used that term. "It's absolutely great. Really great."

In his excitement, he almost knocked over Blaine, who was emerging from his office. "S-sorry, sir!" He exclaimed, as Blaine nearly dropped a folder he was reading.

"Hey, Blaine," Alex said.

Blaine, who was already beginning to glare at Louis, turned to her, his eyes widening and the trace of a smile dancing on his lips before it broke forth into a warm grin. "Alex!" He said, pleasantly surprised. "Long time no see. What's up?"

For some reason, it was Louis who answered, and for some other reason he took the casual greeting as a serious question. "The Head of Spies," he began, not using Alex's name, "was wondering-"

"Yeah yeah yeah." Blaine held up a hand to silence him. He closed the folder he was reading to free up his hand to do so, and Alex belatedly realized he hadn't slammed the folder shut as soon as he saw her, which was what everyone else on the floor had done. "You don't have to speak for Alex, Louis. She can handle herself, can't you? Kicked enough butt to fill up a hospital." He smiled, and Alex smiled back.

"Well," Alex said, not wanting to ruffle any feathers, "as Louis was going to say, I was here to meet with Finance to see about getting some more funds to replace some of our old gadgets. Some of these things we've got in stock are really old and don't work as well as they used to."

"Ah, new gadgets. Should have guessed," Blaine said. "Lock up the office supplies, Louis. Don't want the Spies stealing our pens and sticking lasers into them. Imagine all the paperwork we'd destroy. Not that it would be a bad thing."

He chuckled and Alex did too, with Louis joining in awkwardly, before Blaine said, "Anyways, I gotta run. Half a hundred meetings I gotta get to before I can call it a day. Be lucky to clock out by seven. But hey - good seeing you again, Alex."

"You too, Blaine."

They parted ways, with Blaine disappearing down the hall and Alex continuing to follow Louis through the Central Command labyrinth. "An incredible man," Louis declared, as if she'd never met Blaine before. "Central Command couldn't have a better Head. Tremendous ability. Great record. Brilliant," he finished, with an excited self-importance born from association.

Alex was about to reply - though she honestly had no idea what she would reply with - when a guttural, booming grumble burst from a doorway just ahead of them.

"Hey, Louis, hold up! Have you seen Blaine anywhere?"

It was Rick Boring's voice, Alex realized, as Louis adjusted his tie and stepped into the room. "Yes, sir. I just saw him a few moments ago, actually. We spoke for a few moments before he left. I think he's on his way here now, in fact."

"He'd better be," Rick said bluntly. Inside the room, Alex could hear the clink of a spoon against ceramics. "He's wanted urgently."

"Immediately, actually. We have put out an alert for him."

Alex's eyes widened. She hadn't realized Tomas Eviline was in the room too. Moving to the doorway, she leaned against the frame and crossed her arms, observing the two men at work.

Rick Boring was, once upon a time, WOOHP's resident Mister Popular. If he'd gone to Bev High, he'd have been a Homecoming King - he was just that liked. Whenever he popped into the cafeterias his table had always been crowded and full of laughter and happy talk, and whenever Jerry had thrown a party or a picnic Rick would inevitably be one of the only things - sometimes the only thing - about the event that wasn't lame and boring. But then came Patrick Alister and Central Command, and Rick became the exclusive property of the upper floors, and the lowly denizens of the lower floors all lamented his passing. Presently he sitting at his desk, carelessly stirring a mug of steaming coffee while reading a report lying in front of him. One hand ran casually through the uncombed curls of his hair, before dropping to wuffle out the bushy mustache that graced his upper lip. Alex briefly wondered if he'd lost weight, then decided against it when she could make out his round, stout bulk behind the desk.

Leaning over Rick's shoulder like a malicious vulture, with one hand turning the pages of the report and the other perched haughtily on his hip, was Tomas Eviline. No one liked him as a rule - everyone tolerated him, and even respected him, but no one liked him. Barely forty years old, his head was already starting to go gray and bald, and he spoke with a strange accent that was halfway Estonian, halfway Malibu and made Alex want to scratch her head in confusion. His eyes were crisp and his jaw was unfriendly, and in contrast to the rest of WOOHP, who went around in suits or even shirtsleeves, Tomas made a point of wearing full three-piece suits, complete with pocket handkerchiefs and sometimes even bowties, which struck some as pretentious and all as weird. Unlike Rick and Blaine, no one was unhappy when Tomas was elevated to serve in Central Command.

Rick lifted his mug to take a drink, and his eyes happened upon Alex. They widened as if in shock or horror, carrying so much intensity in them that Louis, who was standing awkwardly in the room, turned around to look at her too. There was a long silence, briefly interrupted by Tomas turning the page again.

"Hey, Alex," Rick said at last, hesitantly. At that point Tomas Eviline's head snapped up too.

Tomas had always been kind of a creep; thus, his suspicious stare was nothing out of the ordinary. But the frosty, even hostile look Rick was sending her way, as if she had broken into his house, was something else, considering how warm and affable he'd always been. For a man naturally inclined to smiles, beer, and slaps on the back, wariness was unsettling and even painful, coming from him.

"Hi Rick. Hi Tomas." Alex tried to smile, but the two men continued to look as if they'd seen a ghost. "What? Do I have something on my face?"

Rick laughed, a desperate, pent-up burst of air that was glad for the chance to break the tension. "No, no, you look great Alex. Nice barrette, looks kicky on you. Just...surprised to see you, is all."

"We're used to having this floor to ourselves," Tomas said. His face had softened into a neutral expression, which somehow didn't make Alex feel any better.

For her part, Alex shrugged. "Well, I've got a pass to be here, if it makes you feel any better."

Tomas laughed. Coming from him, it was hard to be reassured. "How have you been, lately?"

"Good, thanks for asking. Can't wait to get back on the tenth floor. Bet all the spies miss me." They all chuckled at that, awkwardly, before the laughter slowly died out and the uncomfortable silence set in again.

It was quickly broken, however. "Ah! Here's Blaine," Louis exclaimed, sounding very pleased.

Blaine slid past Alex. "Small world, huh?" He said, smiling apologetically, before turning to Louis. "Come on, Louis. Don't waste Alex's time."

"Of course, sir." Louis quickly made himself scarce and vanished from the room. Alex followed, sure she could feel Rick and Tomas' eyes on the back of her head as she left.

* * *

The thirty minutes Louis had promised her turned into forty-five, which suited Alex fine. She spun horrible sob stories of years-old gadgets, of laser pens that burned out after a few seconds of use, mascara nets that failed to deploy, and suction-cup boots that didn't suck so much anymore. She talked about all the safety risks that using such defective equipment involved, and how they could put her and her Spies at great risk in the field. Even better, she brought along graphs and charts and tables that she'd printed out, which Louis eagerly pored over, just as she'd thought he would.

At the end Louis had pronounced himself impressed and agreed to forward Alex's request to his boss, Mrs. D, a severe bride long past marriageable age whose last name remained a mystery. Alex had a better idea - would it help her chances if she spoke to Mrs. D herself? Louis shrugged. It was worth a try.

"You might want to make it quick, though," he said. "Lunch out is at 1, and it's almost 12:50."

 _Excellent._ "Alright," she said, as she stood up to leave. She was about to head back out when she paused in the door and looked back at him. "Hey - just in case this takes more than ten minutes, will you still be around past 1? You know, so you can sign my pass and I can leave?"

"Um," Louis began, and Alex watched him fall into inner turmoil. He wanted to leave at 1 for lunch like everyone else, but he clearly didn't want to leave Alex stuck in Central Command alone - though whether that was out of decency or for reasons of security was anyone's guess. He could sign her pass now and get it out of the way, but that would be breaking the rules, and Alex knew he was the type of person for whom breaking the rules was anathema.

"Yes, fine, alright," Louis said at last, and Alex felt a surge of triumph rush through her heart. "I'll- I'll raid the fridge, see if there's anything. Maybe I'll ask someone to get me something. But _please_ don't take too long," he pleaded. "It's- it's not good for security, to have visitors wandering around when everyone's at lunch. And besides, I don't think Mrs. D would like having her lunch postponed, if even for a few minutes."

"Got it. Thanks, Lou," she said, and stepped out of the office into the hall. Once outside, she took a deep breath, fighting to calm her nerves. Her thoughts flickered back to Rick and Tomas and their cold stares, and their strained attempts at politeness and conversation. _What was up with that_ _?_

Pushing the thought out of her head, she walked down the hall to Mrs. D's office, where she explained her request once more. "I spoke to Mister Stackhall and he agreed that it was a good investment," she offered at the end, as her pitch was winding down. "It was he who said I should talk to you, actually."

"Did he now?" Mrs. D asked, peering at Alex through thick, framed glasses. She wore a decidedly unimpressed look on her face. "Some people are too careless with their money."

"You- you will consider my request, right?" Alex asked nervously. Extra funds wasn't her main reason for coming up to Central Command, but it wouldn't hurt.

"I will speak with the Head of Central Command and let you know," Mrs. D said, heaving herself to her feet. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm late for my lunch break. See Louis - he'll sign your pass and let you leave."

"Sure. Thanks for your time, Mrs. D," Alex said, and left, shutting the door behind her.

* * *

 _Move_ _._

Alex took a deep breath and checked her watch. 1:03. Central Command was almost completely deserted - almost everyone had gone out to lunch. For a moment, her mounting nerves were soothed by a sense of awe at her timing. To be honest, she hadn't expected it would work out so well - she'd expected her half-hour with Louis would end up taking less time, or that Mrs. D would end up throwing her out early so she could get to lunch. But none of those had happened. She'd managed to stretch her meetings out so that by the time she was done the entire office was clear of people. For a moment Alex marveled at the thought, not sure whether she was extraordinarily lucky or just that good.

But she wasn't in the clear yet. Security cameras still hung from the ceilings and Agents still patrolled the hallways, checking for open doors and unauthorized personnel such as herself. Breaking into the Communications Office wouldn't be as simple as just walking in.

 _Breaking in._ Alex gulped as she started walking down the hallway. Part of her couldn't believe what she was about to do, even though she had done similar things countless times before. Breaking into lairs and hideouts and headquarters was something she did to _villains_. Since when did WOOHP become the bad guys? As much as she disliked what WOOHP had become under Patrick Alister, she still held a considerable degree of admiration and respect for WOOHP's mission and what it stood for - that she continued to serve, even after Sam was lost, Jerry died, and Clover was forced out was proof of that. Thus, it was with a fair deal of reluctance, and even guilt, that she braced herself to do what she was about to do.

Alex quickly made her way through the halls, hoping that no one would stop her and ask for her pass. She guessed she had maybe ten minutes or less before Louis got suspicious and went to look for her. Trying her best not to appear anxious or in a hurry, she ducked into a women's restroom and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it was abandoned. Then she reached inside her suit and went to work.

First she took out her compowder and pressed a button, feeling a wave of nostalgia as a beam of light shot out and her old yellow catsuit materialized over her skin, replacing her boring business suit. For the first time in over a year she felt like a spy again, and that pleasant feeling helped temper her mounting nervousness. Next she removed a bottle of Chameleon Eye Shadow, and carefully applied a thin layer of it over her eyes and watched her reflection in the bathroom mirror as it slowly faded away into invisibility. As long as she didn't bump into anyone or make too much noise, she should be safe from alert eyes now.

Alex left the bathroom and made her way through the maze of hallways and corridors, following signs on the wall to the Communications Room. Unlike the rest of Central Command, its door was open - too many people came and went to send and receive messages to make keeping it locked practical. Also unlike the rest of the floor, it wasn't deserted; the communications staff ate in shifts, there being too many incoming and outgoing messages for the entire team to pack up and leave all at once. That made getting in easy, though Alex did occasionally have to dodge a few staffers who were unknowingly walking towards her.

All the while her heart hammered inside her chest, so loud she thought that someone might hear her. As she sneaked through the rows of cubicles, the computer stations, and the busy personnel running back and forth, her thoughts flickered about randomly and chaotically. She remembered Rick and Tomas' suspicious stares, and Louis, having a miserable lunch at his desk. Was Louis looking for her already? Why the evil eye from Rick and Tomas? Did they suspect? Why was she even here? Why did they need the records? What could possibly be in them that they didn't already know?

These questions and others poured through her mind as she weaved her way through the office, looking for the place where the old records might be kept. She eventually found it - a storeroom marked "PAST RECORDS STORAGE - INCOMING/OUTGOING", located in a conveniently out-of-the-way hallway far away from where the action of the room was taking place. It was locked with a keypad on the door handle, but Alex had foreseen that eventuality. Reaching behind her, she unclipped the Electromagnetic Field Disperser Walkman from her belt and clamped its cheap plastic headphones over the keypad device. The Walkman, incidentally, was one of the gadgets she had complained about to Louis and Mrs. D because really, who used Walkmans anymore? It was more likely to attract attention than to help someone blend in. The irony that it was essential to what she was currently doing was not lost on her.

Her hands shook nervously as she placed the headphones over the lock, and as she was about to turn the Walkman on she fumbled and dropped it onto the floor. It was carpet, so it wasn't too loud but regardless the clack of the device hitting the ground sounded as loud as a thunderclap to Alex. Even worse, as it fell from her grip it lost the invisibility afforded by her Eye Shadow, rendering it visible to the naked eye for a split second before she quickly snatched it up again. For a few agonizing seconds Alex listened for the silence, for the question, for the feet heading in her direction to investigate the sound, to look for the thing that was there and then wasn't.

But nothing happened - no one seemed to notice. With a quiet sigh of relief, Alex activated the Walkman and watched as the keypad sparked, fizzed, and finally deactivated. Quickly, she stowed the gadget away and hurried inside, quietly easing the door shut and checking the time on her compowder. At this point, she needed to move fast if she was going to find the records from last June, make it back to the restroom to wash her Eye Liner off, and get Louis to sign her pass before he noticed she had given him the slip. With haste and no small amount of panic she quickly scanned the storeroom shelves, which were stacked full of binders marked with the year and month. Finding the binder from last June, she dragged the heavy thing off the shelf and set it down on a desk.

 _Which day am I looking for again?_ She asked herself, before immediately reminding herself, _June...nineteenth. Nineteenth. That was the day he told me when he first reappeared in LA last week, before Oscar and Clover got dragged into this mess. Let's see, June nineteenth, June nineteenth...nineteenth...oh, shoot._

There were a _lot_ of entries for June nineteenth- enough to take up a full sixteen pages, front and back. Looking for Dean's name in that would take her...well, only a few minutes, but those were minutes she didn't have. Alex gritted her teeth. _Time to do this the stupid way._

She reached up and unclipped her 24 Exposure Mini-Barrette Camera from her hair - the same barrette Bill and then Rick had noticed and complimented - and held it in front of the first page, snapping a quick photo and hoping that the focus and the lighting were good enough. She quickly flipped the page and snapped a picture of the entries on the back, and repeated the process for the other fifteen pages, willing her hands not to fumble with the Camera and her fingers not to fumble when turning the pages. The whole process took her about a minute and a half - much faster than it would have taken her to comb through the entries for Dean. She'd give the Camera to Dina later, and let her and Clover download and examine the photos.

As she was flipping the pages, she noticed something strange. One of the pages had a written note on it - a short sentence, scrawled by hand on the margin, which stood out against the typed entries. She spared it but a glance, too short to study it intensely, and hurried to finish the rest of the photographing, eventually forgetting the note as her nerves started to get to her and her thoughts started to stray to dark and fearful places. Not for the first time, she thought of Rick and Tomas - "Surprised to see you" - "We're used to having this floor to ourselves". For some reason, she remembered Blaine, and wondered briefly but intensely whether his friendliness was just an act, whether he was secretly onto her.

Finally, she finished the entries for the nineteenth, and she had to fight the urge to just slam the binder shut to gently close it and carefully replace it on the shelf. The next few minutes were a blur - she put the Barrette back on her head, sneaked out of the Communications Office, and made her way back to the restroom, which was still mercifully empty. After washing off the Eye Shadow and changing back into her normal work outfit with her compowder, she left the restroom and staggered back into Louis' office.

"Boy, Mrs. D sure does talk a lot," she said carelessly. Immediately she felt surprised at how easily the words spilled from her mouth.

Louis looked up from a sandwich that looked as old as he was. His face looked slightly green to Alex as he forced himself to swallow a bite. "A- a very meticulous person, Mrs. D. Very- very diligent. Surprised she let you talk into lunch but considering how long the two of us took I guess I shouldn't be."

"Sorry for making you miss lunch," Alex said sincerely.

"Don't- don't worry about it." Louis gulped desperately from a can of soda. "Anyways - you, uh, would you like me to sign your pass now?"

"Sure." Alex handed the paper card over, and Louis quickly applied his signature to the black in painstakingly-neat strokes.

"Here. Good to deal with you, Alex."

"Thanks," Alex said bemusedly. "See you around, Lou."

She left the office with a spring in her step, glad to be out of the lion's den at last. She turned in her pass to the Agent at the elevator, signed herself out, and was waiting for it to arrive when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her.

"You heading to lunch now, Alex?" Tomas Eviline asked, and without waiting for an answer he went on, "You eating at the executive cafeteria or outside, today?"

Alex froze, before slowly turning around to meet Tomas' expectant face. "Um, actually," she said, hoping her nervousness and suspicion didn't show in her voice, "I was- I was heading back to the tenth floor, actually. There's...an email I want to reply to before I clock out for lunch."

Tomas raised an eyebrow. "Working hard, I see. Commendable, truly. But a pity - I was going to offer to accompany you to the cafeteria. I am headed there myself, actually."

Alex was surprised. "Not the Central Command cafeteria?"

Tomas shook his head. "They're serving something...vegan today." He had a disgusted expression on his face. "Americans and their fad diets," he said, evidently forgetting Alex was American too.

"Sorry to hear that," Alex said. The elevator arrived, and the two of them filed in, with Tomas letting her enter first like some chivalrous creep. The ride was brief but awkward, and when the elevator arrived on the executive cafeteria on the twentieth floor Tomas left with only the most perfunctory of goodbyes.

 _Wonder what that was about_ , Alex thought as the elevator continued its journey down. _Why would he want to eat with me? Unless,_ her eyes widened, _unless maybe he was onto me, and wanted to follow me around and keep an eye on me. Is that it? And hey - why wasn't he at lunch already? Was he staying behind on purpose? And why wasn't he surprised when he saw I was still there? Did he know I was there the whole time? Oh my gosh ohmygosh ohmygosh-_

The elevator door dinged and slid open, and Alex almost fully expected to be pulled out of the elevator and wrestled to the floor by a mob of Agents acting on Tomas' direct order, and maybe even Rick's as well. But the only person there was Bill, who was eating contentedly out of a thermos can he'd brought from home.

"Afternoon," he said, after he'd finished chewing. "Gee, that sure took you a while. Did you get lunch yet?"

"N- no," Alex managed. "I'll...head out soon. Just need to answer an email real quick first."

Bill nodded and Alex hurried past him, through the familiar hallways, and into her office. She passed half a dozen security cameras on the way, and she struggled not to flinch from their gaze. When she made it back she plopped down in her chair with a long, heavy sigh, and took off her Barrette Camera and tossed it on her desk, before pulling out her own burner phone and firing off a message to Dina.

 _got a ton of pics for u. cya tonite at tehe hotel._


	17. Part Two: Chapter Three

**Author's Note:** Hello all! Just here to remind everyone that this work isn't dead until I say it is.

I feel kinda _eh_ about this chapter. I took some liberties with the characterization of one of the characters on the show that led to him seeming somewhat OOC here (but hey, what else is new?) and the ending is...rushed, I think. It's also unclear, but it's meant to be, and hopefully, when I reveal all in later chapters, it makes sense.

This is also the first chapter that I've written on MS Word instead of directly into FF's Doc Manager. For some reason writing on Word makes me feel more creative and actually _want_ to write. I don't know why.

* * *

 _ **Part Two: Alex's Mission  
**_

 _ **III**_

* * *

It felt strange to be back on Mali-U's campus. Just over six months ago Clover had known these grounds like the back of her hand, but now, as she strolled under the palms and past the freshly-mowed green lawns, it was hard not to feel like a tourist or a visitor. She passed students just back from Winter Break, clad in T-shirts and stylish winter and even autumn dresses, and she felt so much _older_ , and wondered whether it was the diploma or the disappointing postgrad grind that made her feel that way.

The campus was relatively packed now, with it being the first week of the new semester, and Clover had some difficulty navigating through the throngs of jocks, sorority sisters, and nerds that crowded the avenues and poured into and out of the lecture halls. Seeing people walk with their friends – or, even worse, their lovers – made her uncomfortably aware of how alone she was, and she suddenly wished that her own friends were with her.

 _Maybe I should have waited until Alex was done breaking in to come here_ , she thought, but she quickly shoved the idea out of her head. It was too late now; besides, by breaking in to WOOHP Alex was getting the ball rolling, and Clover couldn't stand to sit around while other people were getting busy and doing things. Thus far Dina and Alex had been doing all the heavy lifting; it was time Clover got some work done herself.

Last night's talk with Alex had revealed little she didn't know and a lot she didn't care about, with some exceptions. Alex's mention of Operation Magic and how important it was to WOOHP, for instance, had evoked some awkward and confusing memories for Clover involving Jerry, Patrick, and the rest of the WOOHP Section Heads. These were memories she wanted to keep buried, but part of her also felt as if she should exhume them, not only because it might help her make peace with her last awful months at WOOHP but also because these memories, Clover knew, chronicled the beginnings of Jerry's downfall, which had ended spectacularly with the disaster of Operation Impeachment. And Operation Impeachment was important to her for two reasons - it could help her find Sam, and, as Oscar had revealed to her, Jerry had suspected a connection between Impeachment and the spy. With that in mind, she had resolved - not as firmly as she'd have liked - to reexamine those memories at a later date.

In addition to all the talk of Magic, Alex's review of the personnel departures had also contained one little gem. Among the dozens of people who had left WOOHP – or been forced out by Patrick Alister, as Alex had insinuated and Clover herself had suspected – was one person, formerly of the Investigations Section, who might be able to help them out on their quest for Gavin. He was something of an eccentric, and his record with WOOHP was…spotty, at best. But he was also a walking encyclopedia of information – during his time with Investigations he had been one of Rick Boring's top men, and having him on their side would be almost as good as having access to official WOOHP files. If Clover could find him, anyways.

As it was, thankfully, he had been easy enough to find. A simple Google search had led Clover back to Mali-U, where he had been hired as a computer science professor a few months after he left WOOHP, which she thought was ironic, considering his past with computers. Poking around the Mali-U computer science department's website had gotten her his office and his office hours, and with plenty of time on her hands and a dingy hotel room to get out of Clover had decided to rent a car and make the long drive out of LA to see him.

She had trouble finding the computer science building – _it's not as if_ I _ever had a reason to be there –_ and when she slipped through the doors she gazed in horror at the unwashed multitudes of unkempt, bespectacled CS geeks guzzling coffee and slouched over their laptops. Even worse than the denizens of the building was the labyrinth of corridors that ran throughout it – she got herself lost for a good ten minutes before a grad student had kindly pointed her in the right direction. And even then she had been forced to endure an uncomfortable elevator ride, packed in with at least six people more than the elevator could hold, before she finally found her man.

His office was nestled in a disused corridor, the sort of desolate place only janitors and desperate students travel through. It was in the middle of the floor, and thus had no view. As she approached Clover could make out his voice, soft with an undercurrent of menace, in conversation with someone else.

"But Professor," someone said – from the pitch of his voice Clover guessed it was a student – "this- this class _is_ curved, right?"

There was a tired sigh. "I don't know how many times I have to tell you this. Everything you need to know is on. The. Syllabus. Go and read it." There was a short pause. "You _can_ read, can't you?"

"Of course! I just needed to know. I mean, I really want to get an A in this class. I'm hoping to land a job in Silicon Valley after I graduate, and it's important that I ace all my CS classes-"

He was cut off by his professor holding up a hand. The student followed his gaze, and his eyes fell upon Clover, standing in the doorway.

"Sorry boys," Clover said, smiling. "Is this a bad time?"

From behind his desk, The Brain stared at her with wide eyes, while his student looked between them dumbly. "Um, Professor," he began, "do you know-"

"Get out, whatever-your-name-is. Come back another time," The Brain said, not taking his eyes off of Clover. "Better yet, read the syllabus. Go on, get!" He cried, waving a stubby arm. "Come back when you have real questions to ask. And if you run into anyone you know, tell them I'm busy for the afternoon. And close the door on your way out!"

Clover politely stepped aside as the resentful-looking student slung his backpack over his shoulder and hurried out the room. When the door was closed and they were alone, she turned back to The Brain, a coy gleam in her eye. "You look taller than you used to."

The Brain scoffed. He hopped off his chair and promptly disappeared behind the mass of his desk – a specially-made model designed to accommodate his small stature – and Clover had to fight the urge to laugh. _Guess I was wrong. Some things never change._

But some things did. That was why The Brain was here today. He was one of WOOHP's few success stories, having been successfully rehabilitated shortly after the incident with GLADIS at the Christmas party a few years back. After an experimental brain surgery cured him of his sociopathy, he had gotten over his obsession with a Third World War and been certified safe for release. Afterwards Jerry had had the characteristically maverick idea – over Patrick Alister's furious objections – to put him with Rick Boring in Investigations, where the diminutive ex-con had put his oversized head to good use, cracking cases, shutting down criminal operations, and helping the Agents and Clover's own Spies put dozens of crooks, and even a few ETOKA goons, behind bars. He still had a bit of an attitude, Rick said, but as long as he took his meds he was alright, and anyways he made up for it by simply being so effective at his job. His genius-level intellect and past experience with crime gave him insights that made him a valuable member of the Investigations Section, and he had quickly been assigned to some of Investigation's highest-priority work – including those involving the ETOKA Syndicate.

Until Operation Impeachment went belly-up, Sam dropped off the face of the Earth, Clover was fired, Jerry died, and Patrick took the reins, of course. It didn't surprise Clover at all that The Brain had gotten the boot not too long after she did. Come to think of it, she was surprised that he was teaching at all – she'd have expected Patrick to invent some excuse to have him thrown back into the Containment Center.

As it was, though, he was free. More than that, he was at Mali-U, currently staring up at her suspiciously as he rounded his little desk. "Clover Ewing," he said, in a voice that was low and serpentine, devoid of any inflection or sentiment. There was a pause, and Clover took the opportunity to lower herself into a chair, which didn't stop The Brain from having to look up at her.

"Hey, Brain," Clover said breezily. No one used his real name, which was quite long and unpronounceable. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Did you come here alone?" The Brain said, ignoring her. He hopped up onto his desk, finally making his eyes level with hers. "Unaccompanied, Clover?"

Clover nodded, and The Brain grunted, seemingly satisfied. "So. What brings you out here? What do you want from me?"

"What, can't a girl go to the beach anymore?" She asked, smiling. She wasn't normally so playful, especially around formerly-evil midgets, but the past few days weighed heavily on her and she could use the change in pace. Besides, The Brain seemed pretty serious and uptight, and she couldn't resist the chance to lighten the mood a little. "Can't an alum visit her old school?"

The Brain looked unimpressed. "Don't take it the wrong way, but I don't think _you_ ever had any business in the computer science department. Now out with it. What are you doing here?"

Clover sighed. Some people were just no fun. " _Fine_ ," she said grudgingly. "An old case has…we're going over an old case, I guess you could say. We need all the help we can get, and we were hoping-"

"Who's 'we'?"

"Well, yours truly, for starters. You remember Alex. There's another one, Dina, you don't know her. And Oscar Goodluck. I can give you his number if you want to make sure this all checks out."

"Oscar Goodluck?" The Brain frowned. "You're working for WOOHP again? I'm surprised, after the way they threw you out. I thought you'd have more pride than that." He shrugged as he hopped off his desk and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. " _I_ would never go back to them. Not after what Alister did to me. As long as he's in, you can count me _out_."

"Oh, don't worry! We're keeping this super D-L. Patrick doesn't know a thing, and we'd like to keep it that way," Clover said. "WOOHP's not involved at all." _At least, they're not on our side this time._

The Brain took a sip of his coffee. "What is this then, Clover? Why are you doing this? And more importantly, what do I have to do with it?"

Clover shrugged. "I guess you could call this…wrapping up loose ends? Unfinished business? Whatever sounds cool to you. And, since you used to be one of the best Investigators WOOHP ever had, we figured you might be able to help us out. With a head that big, you've gotta have a memory like an elephant, which means you probably have _something_ that can be useful to us."

The Brain hopped back into his chair and propped his stunted feet up on his desk. Clover was surprised they reached that far.

"I _might_ ," he said noncommittally. He looked away for a moment, then sighed deeply.

"Do you know, Clover," he said slowly, "how much I loved being at WOOHP?" Clover raised an eyebrow, but The Brain noticed and fixed her with a desperate glare. "Not in the Containment Center. Although it was fun to trick and deceive the moronic half-wits they use for guards down there. If Alister fired me for being too smart, the least he could do is give them the axe as well. For being idiots."

He took another bitter sip of his coffee, but Clover's eyes widened in curiosity. "'Being too smart'? What do you mean?"

But The Brain moved on as if he hadn't heard her. "I loved Investigations, Clover. I could finally bring the full weight of my _genius_ to bear on lesser people, and instead of having WOOHP breathing down my neck, they were cheering me on, and giving me all the resources I needed. It…it was _glorious_ ," he breathed. "I accomplished _so much_. Until Alister went and spoiled everything," he said, in a tone that was half-snarl, half-sob.

Clover eyed him warily. Apparently, Rick had been right when he said that The Brain still had an attitude. But as weirded out as she was, she couldn't help but be intrigued. "What did he do?"

"He fired me!" The Brain cried. His voice had risen from its usual flatness to become shrill and distressed. "And for doing my _job_ , too! Do you know what he said to me?" He demanded, evidently forgetting that Clover had already been dismissed by then. "'You're losing your sense of reality,' he said. 'I'm beginning to suspect your wretched criminal instincts are acting up again. Have you stopped taking your medication? I will not tolerate a recidivist and saboteur in my organization. It's time we threw you out into the real world'." He slammed the coffee cup onto his desk, his face red with rage that soon gave way to grief.

"I _hate_ the real world, Clover," he said piteously. "I miss WOOHP. I miss…doing something _important_. Teaching…it's not important." He wore a sad, contemptuous look on his face, and stared gloomily at his desk. "I've been here one semester, and I can't stand it. The idiot students. The snobby colleagues who all look down on you – oh, don't laugh, you know what I mean." The Brain sighed. "I don't know what I'm doing here, Clover. But it's…it makes no difference, whatever it is."

A grim silence fell, broken by Clover asking, "What did you mean, Patrick fired you for doing your job? Was it because of something you were investigating? What was it?"

The Brain looked at her for a long time. Ordinarily Clover would have been creeped out, but she could see the distant look in his eyes, the faraway gaze that saw through her and into the foggy reaches of the past. She waited patiently, aware of pregnant quiet that had come over the room, and the tension that hung so thick in the air she could cut it with a knife.

"Paula Ackoff," The Brain said at last. "In Investigations, we called her Polly. Pretty Polly Ackoff."

* * *

Clover was surprised, and she showed it.

"You were fired because of…Paula Ackoff?" She asked incredulously.

The Brain nodded somberly. "I chased down a lead that Alister thought I shouldn't have." He eyed Clover suspiciously. "You sound as if you've heard of her before."

"I have," Clover said slowly. "That's why I came to see you today, actually." She blinked. What a coincidence, she thought.

"How did you hear of her? The Spies were never sent after her. I know that for a fact," The Brain said bitterly.

"She's involved with the case we're working on," Clover said. "We think there's a Syndicate spy in LA," she didn't say in WOOHP, "and we think she's acting as his handler."

To her surprise, The Brain began to laugh, harshly and with cruel irony. "I _knew_ it," he said, with triumphant acrimony. "I knew it all along! The Brain knew, The Brain told them, but did they listen? Ha!" His body shook with laughter, and he tilted his head back in his chair. Considering how big it was, Clover was surprised the chair didn't tip over.

"How did you know?" She asked, as his bitter chuckles finally died down. "Tell me all about her."

"Oh, boy," The Brain said, rubbing his tiny, chubby hands together. "Polly Ackoff. That's a long story, Clover."

"I've got time." Clover leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs in front of her and her arms behind her head. She flashed him a breezy smile. "Ready when you are."

The Brain took a drink of coffee, and when he finished he held the cup in his hands, his eyes closed meditatively. "Paula Ackoff's story begins about three years ago," he said, eyes still shut. "It was a year after I was released and started working for WOOHP. You were in your freshman year of college then, I think. Still in the field, hadn't been promoted to Head of Spies yet."

His wide forehead furrowed in concentration. "Back then, there was a Syndicate thug named…oh, we'll call him Kevin, after his alias. Englishman, a chav from the council houses – their version of the projects. When he was a kid he ran with gangs, got in fights, almost did time for murder but the evidence didn't stick. Somewhere along the line the ETOKA Syndicate decided they liked the look of him and picked him up. They gave him new clothes, cut his hair, taught him how to speak properly, and at the last minute realized what an utter dimwit he was." He laughed. "Not one of their best hires."

"ETOKA used him as a hitman – an expendable one, given what an idiot he was. They sent him after targets too big for their local partners, but too small for their top killers. Kevin did a few missions for them – most aborted, one wounded the target but didn't kill her. Eventually he got himself caught by Scotland Yard. After they were finished with him, they let WOOHP send a few Investigators to conduct their own questioning. I was one of them."

He exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. Across the desk, Clover slumped in her seat, wondering how long this would take. She'd thought he would start off on Paula Ackoff right away, but apparently not.

"Kevin was a nincompoop, I've told you. On a scale of one to ten, he'd be in the negative numbers. But he did have something interesting," The Brain said wistfully.

"What's that?"

"Kevin was such a dolt that the Syndicate decided to send him to a camp in Siberia for retraining. He'd been there once before, right after they'd recruited him, and now he was going back. It's an abandoned mine of some kind – before I left WOOHP we were pretty sure we knew which one, but the Russians wouldn't let us send Agents or Spies to check. They don't trust WOOHP," he said confidentially. "We got him to sketch out the layout of the camp, and to everyone's surprise he managed to make a pretty detailed drawing. Hundreds of acres of forests and lakes and streams – and the mine, of course, the big pit in the ground – with all the warehouses, the shooting ranges, dining halls, portables, garages, and other things marked out as he remembered. I suppose he'd been there so long he got pretty familiar with the place."

Clover fought to stifle a yawn.

"But then," The Brain said, not noticing her boredom, "just when we'd thought we'd finished, Kevin got quiet, and on the edge of the paper, far away from the main camp, he drew a few more buildings, a double fence to surround them, and a private road through the forest to reach them. He saw them when he was hiking on a hill with one of his instructors. According to the instructor, that compound was a special camp, established by some ETOKA big-shot to train agents for top-secret Syndicate missions."

He looked at Clover. "Have you heard of Rosa, Clover?"

"Yes," she replied, through gritted teeth. _I do_ not _like where this is going…_

"Then you can probably guess who that big-shot was. There were rumors – both in WOOHP and, for those in the know, in the criminal underworld – that Rosa was trying to build his own private army inside ETOKA. We knew he had spies all over the world, and that he was having trouble managing them all by himself. And now, thanks to Kevin, we knew what he was doing about his problem – he was training new agents to handle them, who all took their orders and reported directly to him. His own spy network, Clover."

"And let me guess – Paula Ackoff is one of these agents?"

"'Paula Ackoff' was not and still isn't, according to Alister, Eviline, Boring – even Blaine," he grumbled. "But one Alexandra Stakhova was. Russian, St. Petersburg. Uncle was a thief-in-law in the Mafiya – very high-ranking, with known Syndicate connections. Kevin told us he once saw a car driving down the road toward the special camp – a woman at the wheel, though he couldn't see her clearly, and a license plate we linked to one of Stakhova's cars." He smiled. "So that was it. That was the first of Rosa's agents that we found."

Clover frowned. "What does _she_ have to do with Paula Ackoff, though?"

The Brain scoffed. "If you ask Alister and his pack of hyenas, nothing. But if you ask me…" He took another sip of coffee. "After Kevin's questioning, Boring tried to add Stakhova to the registry of known ETOKA agents, but without positive confirmation – a photograph catching her in the act, for example – we couldn't do anything. Kevin couldn't identify the driver of the car, so the only thing we could do was leave her as a person of interest. And that was the last we heard of Stakhova for a while."

"Then, two years later, she pops up again. This was, oh, two years ago – March of your junior year in college, about the same time you were promoted to Head of Spies and Blaine was promoted to Head of Operations, I remember. She turns up here, in LA of all places, working as a broker for Robinson Brandt Concepts, a real estate agency we know is a front for the Syndicate." He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. "But by this point in time," he continued, "the name on her business card was not Alexandra Stakhova, but rather," he paused for effect, "Paula Ackoff."

"Wait – you mean they're the _same_ person?" Clover asked. "How did you know?"

The Brain smiled smugly. "It was easy. Since we knew Robinson Brandt is an ETOKA front, we have Agents watching it twenty-four-seven. One of the Men in Black snapped a picture of Polly on her first day. I managed to match it to the picture on Stakhova's old Russian passport. She'd cut and dyed her hair and gotten rid of a few tattoos, but I could tell it was her." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, a wistful smile on his face. "I can still see her," he said, somewhat creepily. "Five-foot-seven. Brown hair dyed blonde. Green eyes. Narrow face, thin lips. Played golf on the weekends. Liked whiskey, didn't buy a lot of vodka, surprisingly – though maybe she was just pretending, so no one would suspect she was Russian. She had a lovely voice – I used to play the tapes on loop, just to hear her talk. Imagine your voice, but without the stupid Valley Girl accent."

"Hey! Rude much?"

The Brain opened his eyes. "How is she, Clover? It's been so long – I'm afraid that everything I used to know has changed. Is she still working at Robinson Brandt? Still living at that ugly house in Encino that the Agents hated? It was a pain to perform surveillance on, they told me – the community had a gate and a lot of security cameras, and to make matters worse she lived at the end of a court, where any drive-bys stuck out like a sore thumb."

"I- I don't know," Clover admitted. "I haven't seen her yet." _Maybe I should send Dina to take a look at her, at work or at home. Get a picture of the first – the only – bad guy we have so far._

"Well, you should," The Brain said. "The woman's bad news, Clover. You can see it in her. Even if I hadn't matched her face to Stakhova's, I could tell that she was ETOKA right from the start."

"How? What do you mean?"

The Brain shrugged. "It's hard to describe. She was very…disciplined, Clover. You could see it in her walk, the way she spoke, the expressions she had on her face. Like a soldier – very tough, tougher than any real estate broker has a right to be. There was also the fact she lived in a house the Agents couldn't get within fifty meters of – that couldn't be a coincidence. And let's not forget that she worked for Robinson Brandt, where half the brokers are ETOKA crooks."

Clover leaned forwards in her chair. "Alright. So you knew she was a Syndicate agent. What did you do next?"

"I told Rick Boring, of course. He was my superior. Boring was unsure about it – we'd never positively identified Stakhova as an ETOKA agent, you remember – but he passed it on to Jerry just for the Robinson Brandt connection. Jerry hadn't lost his mind yet, and he told Eviline to put the Agents on her, watch her like a hawk. Eviline put her on the Priority List and put his best LA Agents on her case – two months, twelve random days out of every thirty."

"And what did they find?"

"Nothing!" The Brain said in dismay. "Every time Eviline's Agents paid her a visit she made sure to keep her nose clean and out of trouble. It was infuriating, you see, because I _knew_ this was Stakhova, and I _knew_ she was Syndicate. But we had nothing on her. Boring started having doubts, and Eviline complained that I was wasting his time. He moved her onto the Secondary List, where they watched her for one day a week for six months – up until October or so. When nothing else happened, Eviline declared her Grade White – as clean as paper, as pure as snow, up to no mischief whatsoever. Boring agreed, as did Blaine, Alister, and Jerry, and I was told to give her up, that against all odds Polly really was _just_ a broker who _happened_ to look like a suspected Syndicate henchwoman and _by chance_ came to work half an hour away from WOOHP HQ." He laughed bitterly, and his fists were clenched on the armrests of his chair, Clover saw. "I was _furious_."

The Brain opened a drawer in his desk and fished out a small orange prescription bottle absolutely covered in labels. Popping it open, he tapped out a pill and tossed it into his mouth, washing it down with coffee before continuing. "For a month I couldn't do anything. There was an ETOKA agent on the loose in LA, and I couldn't do a thing." He scowled, but then his hands relaxed on his chair, and he smiled beatifically, a change that Clover found sudden and jarring. "But then," he said happily, "we caught a big break. Back in November, about a week before the Impeachment disaster, one of our Agents who was watching Robinson Brandt had finished for the day and was heading back to HQ when she saw Polly's car pulling out of the parking lot. She followed her over to a supermarket, and while Polly was shopping for groceries she thought to try and get some pictures of her car. Luck was on our side that day – her window was rolled down a little, which allowed the Agent to see through the tint. She'd left a bag on her back seat, a duffel bag, _open_ , the dumb girl, and our Agent got some good pictures off. She brought them back to HQ, we blew them up, and guess what we found in the bag? A gun, pistol, MP-443 Grach by the look of it – a _Russian_ pistol, mind you – with an attached _suppressor_ of all things, sitting on top of a wad of hundred-dollar bills!" The Brain clapped his hands with glee.

"The next day I put on my tallest shoes and went to Tomas Eviline's office. 'Tomas,' I told him, 'I've got Polly Ackoff at last, she's finally slipped up and made a mistake, and now I've got her red-handed. I want to put her down as Alexandra Stakhova and add her to the registry of ETOKA agents, and I want _you_ to sic the Agents on her. Turn her inside out, do everything you crooks in the Agents Section usually do – stage a mugging, bug her car, home, and office, impersonate police and search her, because I'm telling you, she's a Syndicate agent, one of _Rosa's_ agents, and if she's here she _must_ be handling an ETOKA spy!'"

The Brain was excited now, at the peak of his medication's euphoria, and despite herself Clover found it hard not to be excited as well. This was the interesting part of the story. "What did Tomas do?" She asked.

"Uh…" The Brain's aura of happiness dimmed a little. "Well, let me see. He gave me his best 'I-don't-care' voice and told me to follow the chain of command and talk to Boring about it. He was very smug about it, you see, because he knew that Boring would pass it on to Jerry, and Jerry, as you know, wasn't seeing anyone in those days, he'd gone off the deep end by then. Instead it went to Alister, and…well, you know the rest." He sighed. "He said that there was no proof that Stakhova was an ETOKA agent in the first place, and that there was no proof that Polly had anything to do with her – for all he knew Stakhova and Polly were just two people who happened to look alike. At least he had the decency to admit that he was wrong, that Polly was Syndicate all along." He paused. "My goodness, that rhymes."

For a moment, a pleased look crossed his face before mutating into confusion and frustration. "Then he told me to leave Polly alone. To drop the case and go work on something else. He was tired of hearing about Polly, he said. I was seeing ETOKA spies in the bushes, and anyways the Agents were spread too thin to waste any on my 'conspiracy theories'. I wanted to fight it, but then your friend – the redhead, whatever-her-name-was, she got shot, Jerry had a heart attack on the road, and Alister became Acting Director. And you know what happened next." He cleared his throat and did his best imitation of Patrick's Scottish brogue. "'Recidivist and saboteur. Get out into the real world.' And now here we are. You and I are out of WOOHP, Alister is king, and Polly is running amok, doing goodness-knows-what."

Clover frowned. "So let me get this straight. You went to Tomas, who passed you on to Patrick." When The Brain nodded, she went on, "And _Patrick_ was the one to tell you to leave Polly – oops, Paula – alone." She propped her chin up on her hand, leaning forwards in contemplation. "I wonder why he did that."

"Maybe he was right," The Brain said sarcastically. "Maybe Polly really was just another ETOKA thug, and that I was crazy for thinking she was Stakhova and running an ETOKA spy in LA." He drained the last of his coffee from his cup. "But what do you think?"

Clover didn't answer immediately. Instead, her mind had wandered away from The Brain and Mali-U and Paula Ackoff entirely, and had strayed back to two nights ago with Dean.

 _Dean heard of Paula Ackoff from that Syndicate girl, Saki. Saki heard of her from…that guy she was with, Ian or whatever. And Ian heard of her…because…he used to work for her in LA!_

"Did Paula have an assistant, do you remember? At the real estate agency?"

The Brain frowned, and looked up at the ceiling. "One, I think. Chinese man named Ian. Also ETOKA. I traced him to Hong Kong, but I could have been wrong," he admitted. "He was kind of a dork, so I didn't think much of him at first. But over time," he said, looking back at Clover, "I could see a connection. He followed her around like a ball chained to her leg. Polly gave an open house, he was there. Polly went to an office party, he was pouring drinks. Polly shows up to the office late at night, and a couple minutes later Ian's there too. And," he said meaningfully, wagging a finger, "when Polly went on business trips, Ian moved into her office. The Agents saw him moving a cot in there. He slept there until she came back. Whatever Polly was up to, it was so important that she couldn't leave it alone – she needed Ian to watch over it while she was gone."

 _Well, Dean's story checks out once again._

She stood up to stretch her legs and walked around The Brain's office, which was bare and austere. There was not a single decoration to be found, and the furniture only reached up to about five feet off the ground, leaving a lot of empty space on the walls.

"Well. Now you know all I know about Polly Ackoff. What are you going to do about it?"

Clover turned around. "You were right, Brain. There _is_ a spy in WOOHP. And I," she forced the words through her throat, "am going to find him." She gazed at him with what she hoped looked like a confident expression, and in truth she really did feel new confidence, even more than the surge that she had felt when she had had her bright, if shaky, idea in the Islay. After what The Brain had told her, she felt as if she knew her enemy now, and it felt so _good_ to be able to have a face, a name, a history – _anything_ , as long as she could know it with certainty.

"How?"

Clover's confident expression dropped. "Work in progress."

To her surprise, The Brain nodded, evidently satisfied. "Well, good luck with that," he said. "I would love to help you – you have no idea how much, Clover – but," he raised his tiny hands helplessly, "I have…a _job_ now." He wore a disgusted expression on his face. "Unless Goodluck is willing to pay my bills for the next week or month or however long it takes you, I'm afraid I'm stuck here. But please – do come back if you need any more of this," he tapped his head. "I miss WOOHP and everyone who's in it. I don't see anyone these days. Just dumb teenagers who should never have been allowed to graduate from high school and stuffy professors having mid-life crises. Some days I'm tempted to kick my medication and go back to crime, just to go back to the Containment Center and torment the guards again."

Clover laughed. "Don't worry about it, Brain. There's…really not many other people I could go to for info anyways," she admitted.

"What are things like at WOOHP now, do you know? I've always been curious about what they got up to after we left."

Patiently, Clover walked him through everything Alex had told her. At the end, The Brain nodded sagely. "A centralized command structure, I see. More efficient than before. Can't say I'm surprised that Blaine is in charge, either. He was always clever. From what I've heard it sounds like he, not Alister, is pulling the strings."

Clover nodded, and said that Alex had said the same, and that it seemed that way to her too.

"You never liked him, did you?"

Clover's eyes widened. " _What_? Why the heck would you say _that_? We dated for a long time, you know!"

The Brain shrugged. "Well, I heard a rumor once that he left you for your friend, the redhead who got shot. Everyone was talking about it, and while I normally don't pay attention to office gossip, it seemed interesting." He went on, "I sometimes wondered about it. The two of you were both Section Heads, after all, and she was one of your best friends. It must have been…awkward."

 _Awkward is the_ nicest _thing it was_ , Clover thought. Then her eyes widened in alarm. "What do you mean, _everyone_ was talking about it?"

"Everyone in Investigations, I mean. Probably in the rest of WOOHP too, come to think of it. Blaine wasn't very subtle with his innuendo. I remember how he walked through our office space once. He was talking to Boring about you and your friend, and he said that she had the softest-"

That was it. "TMI!" Clover said, shutting her eyes and holding out a hand to stop him. "I don't want to hear about it!"

Inwardly, though, she felt horrifically betrayed. All her earlier optimism of just moments before evaporated, and a cesspool of anger and hurt filled the void it left behind. _Blaine was…_ bragging _about dumping me for Sam? To the rest of_ WOOHP _? Did…did_ everyone _else know?_

The Brain answered that question for her. "I'm…sorry for bringing it up, Clover," he said contritely. "I thought you knew."

"I didn't know that the news had spread through all of WOOHP," she said slowly. "The spies – sure, I worked with them, they could tell that Sam and I were getting bitchy with each other. But I- I didn't know _Blaine_ would tell people like that!"

"If it helped, he didn't seem to bear any ill will towards you," The Brain said. "He was mostly just infatuated-"

"Nope!" Clover held out her hand again, then lowered it morosely. "I can't believe…he would spread the news like that. That he'd dumped me for Sam. Why would he do that?"

The Brain, wisely, chose not to answer. A few uncomfortable minutes passed in silence, and eventually, Clover marshaled her emotions together and managed to compose herself. She took a deep breath and moved towards the door. "Thanks…for the help, Brain," she said quietly. It had become awkward now, and there was little else to say.

"Anytime, Clover. I hope you get Polly, and the spy she's running, wherever he is," he said sincerely. "Good luck. Tell me how it goes, would you?"

* * *

Clover sat near the window, looking out at WOOHP Headquarters in the distance, with the sunset just behind it. Behind her, Dina was fiddling with a barrette, trying to stick a USB cable into it for some reason.

"Mind telling why you're trying to charge a hair clip?" Clover asked, not taking her eyes off of WOOHP. _Blaine…_

"It's not just any hair clip. It's a Barrette Camera. A gadget, you remember? Alex dropped it off a few minutes ago."

Clover shrugged and turned around in her chair. "We had a lot of gadgets. It's like trying to keep track of all the shoes I own."

Dina finally managed to plug the cable in. "Well, anyways, it's what Alex used to take pictures of the communications records." She frowned as she plugged the other end of the cable into a laptop. "I don't know why she needed to take _multiple_ pictures. We are looking for just one entry, after all."

She typed the password into her laptop and opened the folder for the Barrette Camera. Clover got off her chair and moved in, peering over Dina's shoulder. "Whoa. Guess you weren't kidding when you said 'pictures'."

There were sixteen images to go through – each with over twenty, sometimes over thirty entries. "This is gonna take me _forever_ to go through," Clover said in dismay. "Damn it, Alex."

"If you like," Dina offered, "I can-"

"No, it's okay," Clover said. "I'll handle it." Dina moved aside and Clover sat down in front of the laptop. Opening the first picture, she stared at the wall of text and immediately regretted her decision.

 _This really_ is _going to take forever._

* * *

"Huh."

From a chair in the corner of the room, Dina looked up from the magazine she was half-heartedly poring through. "Anything interesting? Find Dean's entry?"

"Yes." Clover said. "I mean, no, I didn't find Dean's entry. But yeah, there's something interesting here. There are sixteen pictures on this camera. But the page numbers on the records – they go from four-eleven to four-twenty-eight."

Dina frowned. "Seventeen pages…sixteen photos. Are we missing a page?"

Clover glanced at her shrewdly. " _Two_ pages. Four-twenty-eight minus four-eleven is seventeen, but you have to add one to count the first page." She winked at her. "Even _I_ knew that." _Who says all blondes are dumb?_

Dina reddened, but the color from her cheeks faded as her frown deepened. "So we're missing two pages, then." When Clover nodded, she went on, "Did Alex just forget to photograph them? Pages stick together sometimes, especially if they're packed in tight."

"I don't think it's an accident, Dina. Pages four-nineteen and four-twenty aren't here, and look at what it says here on four-twenty-one."

Dina got up. "What do you mean? Is there a-" She looked at the laptop screen as Clover circled an item with the cursor.

"That is…very interesting, indeed," she said after a moment.

"Do you know whose handwriting that is?"

"No," Dina said, drawing the word out for a long time. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "But the date – that's from last Friday."

"So? What's so special about last Friday?"

"It's the day Dean arrived in Los Angeles."

"Oh." Clover turned to Dina, then back to the screen. It hit her then. " _Oh!_ " She stood up in excitement. "Oh my gosh," she breathed.

"I'm going to call Oscar," Dina said, going to her purse. "He needs to keep Dean…he and Dean need to know that WOOHP knows he's here."

 _And if WOOHP knows, the Syndicate knows_ , Clover finished. _How did they- that was_ fast.

She took a walk around her room, trying to collect her thoughts about what she had just seen. But only one thought occurred to her.

 _Blaine._


	18. Part Two: Chapter Four

_**Part Two: Alex's Mission**_

 _ **IV**_

* * *

Clover woke up, dressed, and left her room, not paying any attention to where her feet were taking her, not heading anywhere in particular. All she wanted was to _move_ , and to not have to stare at WOOHP Headquarters through her window. Ever since the revelations of Alex's photographs of the WOOHP communications records she was brimming with too much tense energy for the former, and was too confused, afraid, and even disgusted for the latter.

Her plans – or rather, the nebulous sense of momentum that had sufficed for a plan – were in tatters now. For one thing, Dean was now in danger – his secret return to LA by a fake passport had turned out to be not so secret after all, if the note in the margin on page 421, dated on the day of his arrival, had been anything to go by. Still more worrisome and devastating were the contents of that note, a short sentence scrawled in a neat, anonymous hand in the margin on the page after the missing sheet in the record.

After reading and rereading the note, Clover was convinced of one thing – that Blaine, who she had once thought might be sympathetic to their mission, to _her_ mission, and who she had hoped would be able to help them, could not be trusted to do so any more. That not only was he actively hunting for Dean – which was to be expected of him, given that he was Head of Central Command and _de facto_ second-in-command of WOOHP – but he was also involved in a conspiracy or a coverup of some kind. Because not only did the note link Blaine to the missing sheet, but it also suggested that the sheet hadn't just been lost or misplaced. It had been removed on purpose, and Blaine had something to do with it, though she didn't know what yet.

That had been terrifying for Clover to think about. It was one thing to know that there was an ETOKA spy inside of WOOHP. It was another thing to think that Blaine could be assisting him in his mission to undermine the organization, wittingly or not. The idea of Blaine working with the enemy mixed uncomfortably with memories of seeing him with Sam, and Clover could feel nothing but revulsion and anger at the thought. Although, she admitted, it would hardly be the first time Blaine had been tricked into working with the wrong side – that had been how they'd met, after all.

Anyways, with her plan to get Blaine on their side demolished, Clover had been forced basically back to square one, and now was faced with the immensely foreboding and discouraging task of coming up with another plan. It had been hard enough for her to come up with the first one; she had no idea how she would manage it again.

Eventually, Clover made her way out of the hotel and onto the street, which was littered here and there with bits of old trash and covered in a slight stench of decay. At once she wrinkled her nose unhappily and forgot what she was doing; not wanting to stay cooped up inside her room, however, she decided that she might as well stay out, and set off down the broken sidewalk, which was mostly empty this early in the morning.

Later that day, Dina would come by with Dean, relocating him from Oscar Goodluck's home outside the city. Alex was back at WOOHP – having been the one to photograph the note, she probably knew its implications already. As for her – well, she ought to do something too, shouldn't she?

But what?

Without the missing sheet from the communications records, it was impossible for her to know who Dean's message had ultimately gotten to, and who sent the reply that had damned Saki to kidnapping and him to a life on the run. Should she try to look for the sheet? Ask Alex to break in to Central Command again? But where in Central Command? Who had the sheet? Did _anyone_ still have the sheet? If whoever was doing the coverup knew what he was doing, he'd have destroyed the sheet by now.

Clover sighed. _So what now?_

 _Communications records are clearly a dead end. Blaine – that's not an option anymore, for sure._

 _Let's try to be logical about this – ha, Sammy would like that, wherever she is. Damn, I_ have _to start looking for her sometime. No idea where to start, though – she could be anywhere, blended in, maybe even a new identity. Maybe I'll never-_

 _Right! Back on track, back on track. Logical, logical. What else could lead me to Gavin? What else is Gavin connected to?_

… _basically the entire WOOHP Central Command, and thus basically all of WOOHP?_

 _Ok. Think smaller than that. What else-_

 _Operation Impeachment!_

 _Ok, Operation Impeachment! Oscar said- Oscar said that Jerry said that Gavin was what caused Impeachment to fail and Sam to get captured._

 _I wonder- did anyone ever put together an Operational File for Impeachment? There's Operational Files for all operations WOOHP does – there's gotta be one for Impeachment too. Inside's all the juicy details – including why Jerry ordered it in the first place, and why he sent Sam, and just Sam, and what was in Thailand that was so important, and why he gave Sam a fake passport-_

 _And hopefully, from all that, maybe there's something that can take me to the spy._

Clover smiled, but then frowned. Again, if there was a coverup going on, and if Operation Impeachment really was connected to Gavin the spy, chances were that the Impeachment file would have been destroyed already. Even if it still existed, she didn't know where it was, and it would probably be kept under lock and key. She hadn't spoken to Alex since she broke into Central Command yesterday so she didn't know how hard of a time she'd had, but however difficult infiltrating Central Command had been, it would probably be a cakewalk next to finding and retrieving the Impeachment file.

 _Alex is going to have a real tough time. Is there any other way?_

Clover walked on aimlessly for a few more minutes, racking her brain for another way to get the file – or just to know if it existed in the first place. As she walked, though, she suddenly remembered something – _someone_ – and almost immediately turned around and made her way back to the hotel, walking at full speed. She had a call to make.

* * *

"Certainly not," Oscar Goodluck snapped.

Clover sighed loudly into her burner phone. "Well, can't you at least tell me if there actually _is_ a file?"

"There is, I can tell you that much. And no, I can't request it. My authority to access WOOHP files has been curtailed since Patrick Alister took charge – reasons of security. The Impeachment file, and many other sensitive documents, have been moved to new, high-security section of the WOOHP Archives. Anyone wishing to draw files from there needs Patrick's written authorization to do so."

"Is there a way you could get his permission or something?" Clover asked hopefully.

"Don't be ridiculous. Patrick wouldn't want to show it to me, and if I'm being frank, Clover, I don't want to see it anyways. I told you already – Impeachment is something everybody, both at WOOHP and the DPA, wish to forget."

Clover fought to keep her voice even. Oscar sure was being unhelpful. "What if I told you that looking into Operation Impeachment was the next part of my, uh, investigation? That I need it to move forward?"

"Sorry Clover. I could send a request, and even if Patrick does not deny it out of hand he would still demand a reason, and then what do I tell him? What could I possibly want with the worst memory of recent times? There's no way I can get that file for you; if you want it you'll have to find a way to get it yourself."

Clover shut her eyes and frowned. _Gee, thanks for nothing, Oscar_. She'd have to ask Alex to steal the file after all, and from what Oscar said it sounded like it would be hard to do so.

She sighed again. _Alright. So the Impeachment file will have to wait_ , she thought, trying not to growl in frustration. _What else can I do in the meantime? What else, what else, what else-_

"Clover? Are you still there?"

"Give me a minute!" Clover opened her eyes and paced around the room.

 _Impeachment is a dead end, for now. What else can I do? What other leads do I have?_

 _Just Polly Ackoff right now. And Sam, I guess._

 _Sam._

A deep breath. "You can't get the Impeachment file, fine, but can you get me the file for Polly Ackoff?"

"Who?"

Clover spelled out the name. "That's her alias, her AKA. Her real name is Alexandra Stakhova." That had to be spelled out too.

Then, "While you're at it, do you think you can try to find anything on Sam? Anything at all from Witness Protection on what happened to her, where she is, what she's doing?" There was hope in her voice, she could hear it plainly.

Oscar evidently couldn't, however, or didn't care. With a grunt of annoyance, he said, "I can try to get the Ackoff files, but I've told you already – there's nothing on your friend Simpson. Witness Protection is airtight. The only thing left is her standard Personal File, and there's nothing in that that you don't already know. You could try to track her down outside of official channels, but I can't help you there. I have a day job, you know."

Clover's eyes narrowed at his tone. "Fine. Just – get me the file on Polly Ackoff. You can come drop them off, or I can send Dina to pick them up."

"Oh, I'll be by. Goodbye, Clover. I'll be in touch. Good luck."

The line disconnected, and Clover tossed – threw – her phone onto her bed in frustration. She'd been forced back to square one, and now it would be some time before she could start again.

Sighing, she threw herself onto the bed as well, rolling until she was staring blankly at the crumbling ceiling.

 _I…I really don't know what I'm doing, do I?_ She thought. _I mean…I_ have _leads, I guess. But I don't know what I'm going to do with them – where they lead. This whole time Gavin and Polly Ackoff and the Syndicate have been ahead of the game – they got WOOHP, and they got rid of Jerry by screwing over Operation Impeachment. And I'm just here taking things one step at a time. There_ has _to be a better way to do this._

 _Maybe I should start spying on Polly Ackoff. If she's still in LA, of course. And there is the whole business of Patrick being the one to tell The Brain to get off her back. Maybe there's a connection there._

 _Could Patrick be Gavin? That would be…crazy – the Director of WOOHP, an ETOKA spy? But it would make sense, wouldn't it? Patrick never liked Jerry, sold out to the Syndicate to get rid of him, and took over WOOHP on their behalf._

She blinked. _That_ does _make sense! Did I just…solve the mystery?_

Then she laughed out loud. "Course not, silly," she muttered to herself. "Since when has anything _ever_ been that easy? Besides, I'd need proof. Proof, proof."

 _And the only way I'll actually get proof, at this point, is by chasing down Polly Ackoff. And for that, I need the file, which Oscar will get to me…eventually._

She sat up in bed. _Let me get this straight. I have a grand total of three leads right now – Operation Impeachment, Paula Ackoff, and Sam. Operation Impeachment will need Alex to break into WOOHP, into the supposedly super-secure section of the Archives, so nothing's going to happen there for…a while, at least. And Sam – well, I need to start looking for her. Paula Ackoff, right now, is the only lead that's seeing any action._

Clover took a breath. "Ok," she murmured. "I'll handle Polly Ackoff – read the file, and see where it leads. Dina – once she stops by with Dean, I'll put her to work looking for Sam. She'll do it…somehow." She blanched, not wanting to think about how poor her chances were of actually finding her, and, by extension, how unlikely it was that Clover would ever see her friend again. And Alex – I'll send her a message. Right now, in fact."

She grabbed her phone, spent a few minutes drafting and incessantly re-drafting a text, and finally sent a message that, she hoped, didn't seem too daunting or absurdly demanding, so soon after a stressful break-in. Alex didn't reply right away, which suited her just fine, and she set the phone back on the bed and stood up, heading for the door.

At this point, there was nothing left to do but wait, and she would go crazy if she stayed cooped up in her room.

* * *

A few hours later, she returned to find Dina sitting against the wall outside her room. "Been here long?" She asked apologetically.

Dina looked up and smiled wearily. "A little," she admitted, hauling herself to her feet. "I brought Dean. Second floor, room 212. Mrs. Romero will be discreet as always, and I'll get Mister Goodluck to reimburse."

"I need you to do something for me," Clover said.

"What's up?"

"Sam. You remember her, from when you first met Alex and I? She was the redhead with the long hair. The smart one."

Dina smiled. "I remember, yes."

"I need you to…look for her for me." Clover paused. "The thing is that she's, uh, she's in WOOHP's Witness Protection program, and apparently anyone who enters that might as well have dropped off the face of the Earth. So…yeah."

Dina frowned. "You want me to…find someone in WOOHP's Witness Protection for you." She bit her lip, looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully, then looked back at Clover. "Care to tell me why?"

"Jerry's career – and his life – were ended by a mission to Bangkok-"

"Operation Impeachment."

"Exactly, right. Oscar told me that before he died, Jerry told him that the spy, Gavin, was responsible for Impeachment's failure and the scandal that came after it."

"Was Sam the spy involved with the Impeachment incident? The Simpson girl, is that her last name?"

"Yeah." She eyed Dina curiously.

"Word got around," Dina said by way of explanation. "Impeachment was a big scandal, you know. It made the news. I remember parts of it."

"Right," Clover said slowly. "Anyways – if Impeachment is connected to Gavin and ETOKA, as Jerry said it was, then that makes Sam a lead."

"I thought she died in Bangkok. She disappeared, that I remember."

Clover frowned. "Didn't Oscar tell you? WOOHP got her back and put her in Witness Protection. Now I – _we_ – need to find her."

Dina shrugged. "I'm just Oscar's bodyguard. I don't get told important things." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Isn't there an easier way to get information on Impeachment? The case file, for instance?"

"Kept under way too much security at WOOHP HQ," Clover replied. "I've asked Alex to break back in. She's not going to be happy about that, and I don't blame her. In the meantime, I need someone to track Sam down." She gave Dina an apologetic look. "Alex is going to be breaking in again, I have things to do, making Dean do things is too risky…that just leaves you. Sorry," she offered with a sheepish smile.

Dina sighed. "It's…quite alright. I…I don't even know where to start." She sighed again. "You know, nothing may ever come of this. The odds of finding her…Witness Protection is there to make people _disappear_ , Clover. I don't…the odds are not very good."

"I know," Clover said quietly. "I just…need you to _try_." _For the mission, and also for me._

Dina sighed again, and nodded wearily. They said their goodbyes, and Clover went into her room, sitting down in a chair by the window and watching WOOHP Headquarters again for a few moments. Then her burner phone buzzed in her handbag. Fishing it out, she opened it and smiled at the message from Alex on the screen.

 _u WAT?!_


	19. Part Two: Chapter Five

_**Part Two: Alex's Mission**_

 ** _V_**

* * *

"This is…not going to be easy," Alex said, eating from a box of Chinese takeout. She chewed for a bit, her eyes flickering distractedly across the ceiling, before swallowing and looking back at Clover. "In fact, it's going to be almost impossible."

Clover looked up from her own box. "How hard could it be?" She asked, in all seriousness. "It's just a…restricted section of the Archives. If you could get into Central Command, I'm sure you could get into this, too."

Alex raised a skeptical eyebrow. "It's not just getting in," she said. "No, no. Getting in is the easy part – anyone can just walk in, actually. The problem with the restricted section is that you aren't allowed to take files out, unless you're some big shot or have Patrick's written permission or whatever. And that's going to be a problem, isn't it, if you need to read the file?"

"Well, couldn't you just take pictures? Like you did with the communications records?"

"It's not so simple," Alex explained. "Look, I've been down there. The way it works is like this. You walk into the Archives, everything's cool. You head to the restricted section, before you enter you have to leave your bag, notebooks, papers, and electronics with the Agents at the front desk. They walk you through a full-body scanner and then pat you down, just to make sure you take nothing in that you're not supposed to."

"Nothing?" It was Clover's turn to raise an eyebrow in disbelief. "Well, that's dumb. What if you have to take notes or something? Or if you have to check something, and you write a note to remember?"

"I mean, if you're just bringing in a slip of paper or two, they'll check that and let you take it in. As for taking notes, they provide their own notepads and pencils. I've never used them, but I bet they're all really dull." Alex muttered. "Anyways. Like I said, you're supposed to check your electronics in at the front desk, and they have that whole setup with the scanner and the pat-down means I can't even get gadgets in, so taking pictures is not going to be an option. Besides, it's going to look suspicious if anyone sees me."

"Well, fine. What do you do if you want to check a file out?"

"I've never checked anything out," Alex confessed, shoveling another mouthful of food into her mouth and chewing quickly. "You need Patrick's permission, and he never lets me do anything. But the policy goes something like this. You go to the archivist on duty and get a clipboard, which they use as bookmarks down there. On the clipboard you write your name, what section or department or whatever you work in, what file you've withdrawn, and the date. Then you go down to the shelves, take your file, and leave the clipboard there where the file was, so people know what was taken and who took it. Then you go back to the archivist and show him your file. He enters it into the computer, and lets you into the reading room, if you want to read it. Once you're done, you go back to the archivist, he marks the file returned, and you put it back, take the clipboard, and give it back to the archivist, or if you want another file you write down the new information."

"What if you want to take a file out? Like, completely out of the restricted section? Out of the Archives?"

"You need to show him that you have permission from Patrick. He places a call to the front desk, and they bring you your bag, and you find his signed permission letter or whatever and you show it to him. Then he enters the file you took and your info and all that into the computer, and gives you a due-by date. It's like a library, but with a lot more hassle."

Clover checked her watch, then leaned back in her seat. "Alright. Let's pretend you went in, you took notes, and you want to leave. What's that like?"

"It's a lot easier than coming in, but they still do their security," Alex said. "You don't have to go through the scanner on the way out, but you do still get pat down, and you have to show the Agents the notes you took. I've never seen them confiscate anyone's notes, but…" She shrugged. "I've only been there, like, once. I bet it happens."

Clover thought on all of that for a minute, then sighed wearily. "Geez," she muttered. "Complicated much?"

Alex nodded eagerly. "Yeah. You see all the problems. I can't take anything in to take pictures on, and they check the notes I take out. I can't take the file out without authorization-"

"And you can't even read the file without showing it to the archivist first," Clover groaned. "If you pull the Impeachment file, you can bet that'll get everyone's attention."

"Yup," Alex said sadly.

Clover sighed. "Can't you- read a little bit, like, in the aisles? By the shelves? Is there, like, someplace you can hide and read the file without showing it to-"

"Nah," Alex said. "Cameras. Omnidirectional, full-spectrum. I'm pretty sure they also have Agents patrolling, too. If you linger in the shelves, they'll see you."

"Damn," Clover muttered. She shut her eyes and placed her fingers on the bridge of her nose, hard in concentration. "Can't you…like…is there another way? Maybe you could come in from the air vents, or maybe use a gadget outside of the restricted section and bypass the security-"

Alex laughed. "Clover, the Archives are like a library. Like the library at Mali-U, remember? It was so quiet, people used to give you looks if you scraped your chair against the floor while taking a seat. If I break in through the vents, I'm going to make all kinds of noise. Everyone's going to notice."

"Well, how about a gadget?" Clover desperately said again. "I mean, there has to be _something-_ "

Alex shook her head. "No way in without going through the scanner. That'll see through any disguise or gadget I use." She paused, rubbing her chin contemplatively. "I _guess_ I could try going in through the exit door, but there are always a couple Agents there to pat people down and check notes as they leave. They'll freak out if that door opens when there's no one there, and I don't think it's big enough for me to slip by when someone's coming out."

Clover sighed loudly. "Well, what can you do?"

A shrug was all Alex could offer her. "I'm still thinking. At this point, I'm debating about whether I should go down there to scout the place out some more. It might be useful, but people might get suspicious, since I usually don't go there."

"Well, try to find an excuse," Clover suggested, closing the lids on her takeout and standing up to throw it away. "I – _we_ – really need to see the Impeachment file, Alex. It could tell us about Sam," she said quietly. "Why she went to Bangkok, what she was doing, what happened to her. And maybe even where she is."

Alex stood to throw her food away too, joining her at the trashcan. "I'll try," she said sincerely. "But it will take a while. I need to plan out how, because right now," she sighed, "I have no idea how it's going to happen. You might not see that file for, oh, a week. At least."

Clover smiled. "As long as I do see it. And thanks, by the way. I know it's…super-risky, and all that, and that it can't be easy for you to steal from WOOHP." She walked across the room and sat on her bed, stretching her neck and arms. "Life really went downhill after we graduated, didn't it?"

"Ever since…Sam disappeared," Alex said softly. "You really sure this will help us find her?"

"Dina's on that right now, but I don't think she's having much luck," Clover said, standing up as Alex gathered her things and shrugged on her jacket. "The Impeachment file could help, at the very least."

"Then I'm on it. You can count on me. Just…be patient," Alex said once more, as she made her way to the door.

"I will. Later!"

"Later." Alex opened the door and slipped out, and Clover let out another long sigh. She checked her watch again, and busied herself on her phone for a few moments before she heard a knock on the door. After taking a look through the peephole, she schooled her features into a disapproving expression and swung it open. "Took you long enough," she said archly.

"What can I say?" Oscar Goodluck said. "Evening traffic in the city is murderous." He held up a briefcase in his hand. "I brought the Ackoff file, as promised."

Clover eagerly took the briefcase and began to rummage through it, to Oscar's distress. "Hey, careful. There are plenty of important documents in there, most of which you aren't supposed to see."

"Well, you know, I'm not technically allowed to see Polly Ackoff's file either, but that didn't stop you from handing it to me in person," Clover said, as she extracted a beige manila folder bearing the WOOHP logo. "What would your bosses at the UN think, if they knew what you were doing?" She inquired innocently, flashing him a mischievous wink.

Oscar took his briefcase back from her. "As long as you catch Gavin, it will all be worth it," he said. "But if you don't, if WOOHP or ETOKA discover what we are doing, then the UN is the last thing I need to fear. You, too."

Clover opened the file, absentmindedly flipping through the pages. It was rather a bit thinner than she had expected. "Sure, sure. If I need anything else, you'll get it to me?" She asked.

"If I can."

"No one followed you here, did they?"

Oscar looked quite taken aback by the suggestion. "Should I be looking over my shoulder every minute now, Clover? Has something happened? Are you compromised?"

Clover smiled, quietly enjoying the sight of the normally-unflappable Oscar Goodluck being freaked out. "Relax, don't worry about it. Just…something to keep in mind. Couldn't hurt."

"Mmm," Oscar grunted, before turning back to the door. "Well, keep me informed." At the doorway, he paused for a moment, taking a good long look around the room, which Clover suddenly remembered he had never seen before. His eyes stopped for a moment on the window. "That's a good view you have there," he remarked. "Goodbye, Clover."

"Hmm? Oh, right. Later," Clover said. Oscar left, and Clover's eyes went down to the folder in her hands.

 _Suspect File: ACKOFF, Paula_ , she read. It felt light in her hands, and in the light of the room she could see a make out a sparse, thin layer of dust at the top, along the edges of the folder and the pages inside. Clearly, it hadn't been read in a long time.

She sat down at her room's battered old desk and opened the folder, this time paying attention to the words on the pages and in the margins, studying the photographs in the file. A blonde-haired, green-eyed woman stared back at her, her expression hard and unrevealing, with a mysterious glint in her eyes and a coy twist to her lips. Her gaze, paper and eternal, seemed to look through her, and for some reason she couldn't name Clover felt as if she was challenging her, in an arrogant way only people who are sure of their own victory do.

Unsettled by her stare, Clover averted her eyes, propped her head up on her elbow, and began to read.

* * *

A few hours later that night, Clover was woken by a knock on her door.

She blinked once, then again, then ran her tongue along her lips and the inside of her mouth, wincing at the stale taste. _How long have…when did I fall asleep?_ She thought blearily as she reached for the chapstick in her purse. _What…what was I doing, again?_

There was another knock on the door, and suddenly Clover was wide awake. "Coming!" She called, as she hurriedly smeared chapstick over her lips, then gulped down water from a nearby bottle. There was a mirror on the wall, and she used it to hastily smooth her hair back before moving through the door and looking through the peephole.

She smiled in pleasant surprise, and opened the door. "Hey, Dean."

Dean smiled. "Good to see you, Clover."

"Come in." She stood aside and held out an arm in welcome. "Sorry for making you move. Alex…raided the Central Command offices, and found evidence that WOOHP was onto you."

"So Dina told me," Dean said, taking in her room. "Huh. Just as lousy as mine."

"It grows on you," Clover replied. "You should have seen me when I first came to this place. I thought I'd die in here – that I'd be eaten alive by rats or bedbugs or get poisoned by the toxic water or something."

Dean looked up from her minifridge. "Wait, there are rats in here?" He said nervously.

Clover smiled. _First Oscar, now Dean. Man, I am on a roll today_. "No," she said sweetly, "you don't need to worry about that. Although I saw a cockroach once," she added, as an afterthought.

Dean shut the fridge. "I hate it here," he muttered.

"Join the club, mister," Clover said, sitting back down at her desk. "Is that why you're here? Misery wants company?"

Dean leaned on the desk next to her, coming dangerously close to crushing Polly Ackoff's file with his rear. "Basically," he admitted. "I'm bored out of my mind, Clover. I've been here less than twenty-four hours, and I already want to open my window and throw myself out. I want to sneak out, but Dina will get mad if I do-"

"And so will I! Didn't you hear? WOOHP is looking for you now, and that means the Syndicate is too." Clover shook her head. "Too risky. You're staying indoors."

Dean pouted, then sighed. "I'll try. But I make no promises." He looked down, and his eyes landed on the file he was almost hitting on. "Hey, what's this?"

He reached for the file, but for some inexplicable sense of security Clover quickly snatched it away, before remembering their circumstances. _Dean was the first one to tell me about Polly Ackoff, and he, Alex, Dina – and Oscar, I guess,_ she admitted grudgingly _, are about the only people I can count on right now_. With some sheepishness, she held it out to him, and he took it with a raised eyebrow.

He raised his other eyebrow when he read the name on the folder. "Well, well, well. Getting busy, are we?" He opened the file and paused at the photo on the first page. "Huh. So this is what she looks like."

Clover sighed. "I've been reading that thing for hours."

"How? It's not that thick."

"Yeah, but I've been reading it over and over again, trying to see if there's anything I've missed. There's actually not a lot in there that's useful, or that I don't already know." She took the file from him and began flipping through the pages. "Her address, alright. Crawling with guards and security cameras, it says, and anyways everyone's too busy to break in and poke around. And don't say that you could, that's too risky." She paused. "I guess I could, if I got Alex to hit me up with some gadgets, but again if I got caught it would all be over. So that's really not too helpful." She flipped some more. "Here's the report from Tomas Eviline, grading her Grade White – not at all a spy, he says. Yeah, good call, Tom," she muttered.

As she flipped a small stack of paper slips, stuck together with a paper clip, fell out onto the floor. Dean picked it up and examined it. "What's this?" He asked.

"Oh, that. It's a bunch of check-out slips from the Archives. Around, like, ninety percent of them are from The Brain, I think," Clover said dismissively.

Dean unclipped the stack and began to absently go through them. "Wow," he murmured. "You really weren't kidding when you said most of these were from The Brain. Starting to think he had a crush on her or something."

Clover made a face. "I _so_ do not want to think about that."

They kept looking through the respective documents in their hands for a few more moments, when Dean yawned and set his stack on the desk. "Alright, I'm pretty sure there's nothing to see here. Just The Brain, like you said, and a few guys I've never heard of before."

Clover turned and gave him a surprised look. "Really, Dean? I didn't think there was anyone at WOOHP you didn't know. You used to be really popular back in the day." _With the girls, at least_ , she thought wistfully.

Dean laughed. "Well, yeah, but WOOHP's a big organization. How am I supposed to know who…uh," he reached for the stack of check-out slips again, "Michael Husak is, or Gerald Lewis, or Angela-"

"Wait." Clover's eyes widened in sudden realization, and she immediately shot up and snatched the slips from Dean's hand.

"Hey! Rude much?" Dean said injuriously, but Clover ignored him, feverishly searching through the pile, tossing The Brain's slips aside as she did so. A small cloud of them fluttered to the floor and crowded around her feet.

"Did you say," Clover said, not taking her eyes off the slips, "Gerald Lewis? _Gerald James Lewis?_ "

Dean stared at her. "Uh, I think that was one of the names, yeah. Why, what's up?"

Clover sighed in exasperation. "Gerald Lewis is _Jerry Lewis_ , Dean!" She exclaimed excitedly, still rifling through the slips.

Dean stared at her. "Wait. Really?" He said, looking very dumbstruck. "His first name is _Gerald?_ His last name is _Lewis?_ "

Clover stopped briefly to give him a disbelieving look. "Well, _duh_. Weren't you at the funeral?" She demanded archly.

"Well, yeah, but – oh." Realization dawned over Dean's face. " _Oh,_ yeah. I remember now. Oh, yeah," he repeated lamely.

"Honestly, I can't believe you didn't realize that 'Gerald Lewis' was-"

"Hey! In my defense, no one ever called him by his real name, alright? To me, he was just 'Jerry'. And it _has_ been, like, over a year since the funeral. You forget things."

"Whatever," Clover said. "Good thing not all of us are as clueless as you are, Dean. Aha!" She held out the slip she was looking for.

 _Suspect File: ACKOFF, Paula_ , it read. _Checked Out On,_ September of two years ago, _to LEWIS, Gerald James_.

 _Two Septembers ago_ , she thought. _Two Septembers ago. Last September was the September after I graduated. Two Septembers ago…was the September before Operation Impeachment happened and Sam disappeared. It was the September before all this started. It was…the September that Jerry started locking himself away in his office._

Her jaw dropped as the gears began to turn in her head. She turned to Dean and showed him the date. "Ring any bells?"

Dean frowned. "Um…no?"

Clover sighed again. "Think! You must have heard the rumors. We all did! Everyone did! What was Jerry doing in September two years ago?"

Dean closed his eyes in concentration. "I don't remember. Was he…was he shutting himself away in his office, or something? Not taking meetings, not answering the phone or email or something?"

"Yes!" Clover said. "And, if you remember, he was also taking files from the Archives back to his office to read. Dozens of files, maybe even hundreds. Everyone was talking about it. They said he was getting nostalgic, or that he was trying to make himself feel better by reading up on his old successes before he was fired."

Dean blinked. "What does…what does that have to do with anything?"

Clover picked up Polly Ackoff's file and held it up, studying it with a newfound respect. "Jerry was reading about Polly Ackoff in those two months he was locked up in his office. Well, her, among, like, a million other things. But still! Why would he be interested in her?"

Dean frowned. "Ackoff is acting as Gavin's handler. Saki said so and it was enough for ETOKA to silence her, so there must be something to it."

"The Brain thought the same thing," Clover murmured, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Well, he was sure she was handling a spy; he didn't know about Gavin specifically."

Dean's eyes widened. "Do you think that maybe-"

"Saki said that Polly Ackoff was an ETOKA agent. The Brain said she was too," Clover said, turning her eyes to her window, where WOOHP Headquarters glittered in the distance.

"Oscar told me that before he died, Jerry told him that there was a spy in WOOHP. And now that I know that he was looking into Polly Ackoff…"

The gears in her head ceased turning, having finally spun themselves into shape. A golden idea had taken form inside her, and its clarity was dazzling to behold. The mere thought was enough to cause her heart to flutter, to quicken the pace of her breathing. It made her feel brave, and strangely hopeful, and distantly sad, all at once.

Clover took a deep breath before turning around to face Dean. "Saki and The Brain both said that Polly Ackoff was handling a Syndicate spy in LA, in WOOHP. I'm starting to think that Jerry had the same idea," she said, in a voice quiet with awed revelation. She looked down at the Ackoff file. "I think, in those two months he spent in his office, all alone with all the Archive files, just before he died…"

She looked back up at Dean, her eyes wide. "I think he was doing the exact same thing then as we're doing now," she said softly, carefully giving voice to her fragile, precious, suddenly obvious idea. "He was trying to catch the spy."


	20. Part Two: Chapter Six

**Author's Note:** Hello. Thanks for your patience. Sorry this is bad. It picks up in the middle. The end ties into the next chapter I have planned, I swear. And things may make sense eventually, I promise. Please message me if you have any questions.

(whoo flashbacks yay lmao)

* * *

 _ **Part Two: Alex's Mission  
**_

 _ **VI**_

* * *

Clover tossed the notepad she had bought onto her room's shabby wooden desk, with its splintered surface and untold years of gunk nestled in the grooves and cracks. Settling herself down into the chair in front of it, she pulled a pen, its cap long gone, out of a loudly-squeaking drawer and went so far as to press the tip onto the paper before suddenly stopping. Slowly, she put the pen down.

She was excited – after what she had just learned, how could she be otherwise? A heady rush washed through her veins, something uncertain but daring nonetheless, reckless, unconcerned. And that was the problem. It was so enthusiastically energetic, almost ecstatic, that her feelings, her thoughts, her intuitions and sudden deliverances surged far, far ahead of her mind's ability to take them and set them in order. Everything seemed connected now, all of a sudden, like a massive spider's web that suddenly emerged from thin air, the strands all growing out and connecting simultaneously.

 _Deep breath._ She closed her eyes and breathed in, counted to ten, and let it out. _Again. Again. One more time, come on now…_

With immense struggle, she willed herself to pick the pen back up and set it to paper once again.

 _Where to start, where should I start?_

Ancient instincts from high school and college almost kicked in, and she felt a sudden urge to write the date and give her thoughts a title, like she was attending a lecture. But that was hardly necessary; besides, no words could capture the immensity and the complicating secrecy of what she knew and was doing.

Almost of its own accord, her pen moved down the page in a straight line. When she had finished it, she tapped the end of her pen twice on the desk, then capped the line, making a disproportionately long "I".

 _A timeline._ She recognized it only after she drew it, but at once she saw the value. _I can work with this._

At the top – _Jerry suspects._ At the bottom – _Now._ And in between…

Feverishly, blindly, she began drawing more lines and scratching in dates and notes, moving down the timeline chronologically in a jittery scrawl.

 _Jerry locks himself in his room – September_

 _Jerry – Polly Ackoff – September_

 _Jerry – Op. Impeachment/Sam to Thailand – November_

 _Sam gets shot/kidnapped/vanishes – November_

 _Jerry – accident – November_

 _Patrick – Woohp director – November_

 _Me – fired – November_

 _Oscar – doesn't help me – November_

 _Jerry – dies – December_

She stopped there and squeezed her eyes shut. _What was next?_

It was a hard question to answer, because her memories of those days were limited to herself, and she had been in pieces after losing her best friend and the job that had been such a large part of her for years. But gradually, words from Oscar Goodluck came back to her from that fateful night when she had allowed herself to be dragged back into this craziness.

" _Simpson,"_ Oscar had said, _"was recovered by a WOOHP commando team almost a year ago now, sometime last January, near the end of the month. She was in Russia, I think – somewhere with snow, I know for sure. She was entered into Witness Protection in early February."_

Clover's pen moved with her thoughts. _Sam rescued – Russia? – January_ and _Sam in WP – February_.

As that was done, she frowned. _When did The Brain get fired? How does he fit into this?_

It occurred to her that she hadn't asked frustration, she wrote _BRAIN?_ next to the timeline and circled it. It was after she had been fired, Clover knew that – he had still been around when she had been dismissed. And by the sound of it, it seemed like Patrick Alister had wasted no time in getting rid of him. With some hesitation, she drew a line from the circle, then lines branching out from it, spanning the time between her firing and Sam's entering Witness Protection – it seemed unlikely for The Brain to have lasted longer than that.

And afterward – she drew a squiggly line on the timeline. _REORG – Central Command etc._ That was all she dedicated to Patrick's sweeping restructuring of WOOHP, with its gutting of Spy Section and the atrophic atmosphere it had brought in.

Clover's pen next moved on to Dean and his mission to Singapore.

 _Dean/Singapore/Saki/etc. – June,_ she wrote, before drawing multiple branching lines. _Arrived – 12_ _th_ _. Met Saki – 15_ _th_ _. Learned info – 16_ _th_ _-18_ _th_ _. Contact WOOHP/Saki kidnapped/Dean framed – 19_ _th_ _. Dean in hiding – June-January._

She was nearing the end of her timeline now. Drawing another squiggly line, she wrote, _Dean back to LA – January. Gavin messes WOOHP comms records – January. Dean meets Alex/Oscar – January._ And finally, _Me – January._

She was at _Now_. With a sigh, she tossed her pen onto the desk and leaned back in her chair, tilting her head back and staring blankly at the ceiling, wracking her brain for anything of importance she might have missed.

As it turned out, there was one thing. Britney, Alex had told her, had been fired too, at some point, and though she wasn't sure when she could easily follow that up with Alex – she made a note to do just that. Perhaps there was something sinister surrounding her firing – after all, Clover remembered, Britney had been conspicuously absent at Jerry's funeral, and now that she thought about it it was strange that Britney would have gotten the axe during WOOHP's reorganizational phase while Dean stayed onboard; she was at least as good as Dean, and Clover doubted Alex would have let Britney go without a fight. On the other hand, perhaps there was nothing – perhaps Britney had just drawn the short straw, or Patrick's particular ire, and her dismissal was routine.

But even with Britney remembered – for whatever it was worth – the timeline still felt unfinished and posed several unanswered questions.

 _Why did Jerry send Sam to Bangkok?_ Clover circled the relevant entry, then the entire stretch of the timeline between Sam's capture and return. _Where was she?_

Then there was the open question of what Gavin had been up to throughout the duration of the timeline – betraying Jerry and Dean aside, of course. What other mischief had he been doing?

And then there was Paula Ackoff. Clover wrote her name down. According to The Brain, she had turned up in the March before the craziness began – in other words, before the start of the timeline. Had she been handling Gavin the whole time? Or had she spent some time recruiting Gavin? And, for that matter, how did she handle Gavin? What were her methods?

 _So many questions._ Clover sighed, but rather than throwing up her hands and dumping her head on the desk, as she might have done just yesterday, she tapped the end of her pen thoughtfully against her chin. As many questions as she had, at least she had a clearer picture of what had been going on. That had to count for something.

She looked down at her timeline, now a mess of lines flying every which way and progressively-more-illegible scribbling. Despite it, she felt proud of it in a strange way, and tore the page from the notepad and stuck it to the wall with a thumbtack from a box she had bought, pondering it for a moment.

 _Questions, questions. As for why Jerry sent Sam to Bangkok – I'm hoping Alex can answer that for me, if she ever gets her hands on the Impeachment Operational File in the WOOHP Archives. What Gavin did – I honestly don't think I'll know that until I catch him. As for how Paula Ackoff does her job for ETOKA – I can't risk putting her under surveillance to find out. And I don't have enough people to watch her even if I could take the risk._

 _So – my only real lead right now is Jerry and Sam, and that's waiting on Alex, who will need a heck of a lot of time to plan and prepare before she breaks into the Archives._ Clover frowned. She didn't like the thought – that her investigation had to hibernate for a while until Alex was ready. _There must be something else I can do…_

 _Track down Britney, I guess. But there's no reason to think that that'll help. Sure, her leaving WOOHP and not being there at Jerry's funeral was weird and all, but…that's not enough to go on. There's nothing linking her to any of this._

She tapped the pen harder against her chin. _Come on, girl! Think, think!_

Her eyes suddenly widened, and her pen shot out and jaggedly circled the top of the timeline – _Jerry suspects._

 _I can't believe I didn't think of it! It's literally the first thing – why did Jerry ever suspect there was a spy in the first place?_

Another rush of excitement surged through her, more mild and moderate than the one she felt as she was drawing her timeline but potent nonetheless. She stood up from her chair and paced around her darkened room, mulling over the problem. What had existed that gave Jerry the idea that there was a spy? If it had been enough for Jerry to investigate on, then it should be enough for Clover, too. The lights of WOOHP Headquarters streamed across the night through her window, silently awaiting her answer.

And the thing was there were two answers, both of which she knew. One, the most obvious, was the string of failed WOOHP operations in the run-up to Jerry's locking himself away and Operation Impeachment. She remembered those days from her time as Head of Spies.

It began around May, near the end of her Junior year at Mali-U, a few months after she had been appointed to run Spy Section in March – and, for that matter, after Blaine had been appointed to his position as Head of Operations at the same time. From May to Operation Impeachment in November WOOHP's operations had begun going belly-up at an alarming rate. Some put it down to mere coincidence, but others – Clover among them – had felt that it was happening too regularly, and with consequences that were far too disastrous, to be the result of mere bad luck.

Clover closed her eyes, venturing back into the memories of the long-lost days. It began, she remembered, innocently enough. A few WOOHP raids by Agents and Spies were foiled when their targets disappeared and went into hiding before WOOHP was prepared to move on them. Clover had been on one of those raids with Sam and Alex, trying to arrest an art smuggler in Milan. She remembered the thrill of evading guards, of scaling walls and cutting through doors – only to feel the acute bewilderment and frustration of finding that their target had escaped long before they arrived.

 _Sam said it was almost as if someone him them off that we'd be there._ She recalled the image of the three of them standing in an empty bedroom, with Sam staring angrily at the bed, whose occupant, rather than being snugly tucked between the covers awaiting handcuffs, was probably halfway around the world in some Syndicate safehouse or other, waiting for the opportunity to reemerge when the coast was clear and go back to his criminal ways. The feeling and knowledge of being outfoxed, of being left behind so easily, had grated on all of them and left a toxic taste in their mouths. Unconsciously Clover's hand formed an impotent fist just while remembering, and when she became aware of it it took her a few moments before she could will herself to unclench her hand.

 _As bad as things were, though, they somehow managed to get worse_ , Clover remembered, as her fingers loosened and flattened themselves against the side of her leg. No amount of fist-clenching, she knew at once, would be enough to relieve the crushing blows of what had followed.

After about a month of blown operations, the failures began to get bigger, and deadlier. Instead of arriving to find suspects gone, WOOHP Agents and Spies began running into ambushes and traps. At the same time, WOOHP informers embedded in ETOKA and the Syndicate's partner organizations began to go silent, and before long their bodies began to be recovered by local police departments floating in rivers or rotting in lonely stretches of wilderness. The names of bloody disasters bubbled to the front of Clover's mind: Clockwork, Bright Haven, Goldenrod, and so many others, each one a mission aborted or catastrophically failed because the Operation Managers, Agents, Spies, or informers involved encountered unexpected gunfire, bombs in cars, or knives in backs, and came back shaken, bleeding, or not at all.

Faces came to Clover's memory too. Jamie – blonde-haired and blue-eyed like herself, one of the first Spies to join WOOHP after she'd been made Head, and consequently someone Clover had felt a certain degree of responsibility for, a peculiar big-sisterly affection. Ricardo – slick black hair and a confident smile, recruited from the rough-and-tumble public schools of Jersey City, who stayed straight in a place where drugs and crime came as easily as breathing and eating. Louisa – a delicate nose and long brown bangs that nearly covered her left eye, from Montana, of all places, someone quiet and shy, whom Clover once caught curled up on a sofa in the lounge on the tenth floor at WOOHP HQ, drawing something beautiful in a well-worn sketchbook. They had all died in Peru, along with over thirty Agents and over a dozen bystanders, killed by an ETOKA-affiliated cartel on a mission called Horoscope that began as a simple raid on a drug warehouse and ended with a village in flames and a massive funeral service at WOOHP Headquarters. And they weren't the only ones – a few other Spies were laid to rest in those months, and still more were hospitalized for severe wounds sustained in action. Handsome boys and beautiful girls who would never be handsome or beautiful again. Happy people, quiet people, who lost their happiness and would be forever quiet in trauma and grief. Tears welled in Clover's eyes, and she took a few deep, ragged breaths, trying to keep her old emotions in check and her head on straight.

In the wake of all the catastrophes, she recalled painfully, morale had been at an all-time low, and no one had any answers. In the mournfully quiet cafeterias Agents, Investigators, Spies, and Operation Managers had muttered about an unprecedented string of bad luck, but in the upper floors, in the corridors of power, senior officers had blamed Jerry, with Patrick Alister leading the charge. With his wide network of social and professional contacts, he had even managed to sway high officials at the UN, including Oscar Goodluck and the Assistant Secretary General of Human Protection, towards his line of thinking, and the pressure for Jerry's retiring and stepping down from leadership of WOOHP grew stronger and stronger.

It was easy to see, Clover mused, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, how Jerry, in such a poisonous atmosphere, under such unprecedentedly trying circumstances, could have suspected that there was a traitor at WOOHP – how else to explain the suddenness and the frequency of all the failed missions? And how better to explain the growing chorus of voices in WOOHP and at the UN baying for Jerry's blood and demanding that he leave, than to say that it was arranged by a Syndicate agent trying to get rid of a stalwart ETOKA enemy? If there had been a spy, he would have been killing two birds with one stone – stopping WOOHP's investigations in its tracks and removing Jerry from the picture.

The energy slowly drained from Clover, and she lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. It was a good reason for Jerry to have suspected that WOOHP was being betrayed, the run of failures, but somehow Clover got the feeling that it wasn't the only one. The fact of the matter was that there might have been a second reason for Jerry to become suspicious as well.

Her grounds for believing that were shaky at best, she realized. They were based solely on one memory she had of an event that she had never been able to make sense of, even when it took place. Sam, had she been there, would have called it bizarre – as it was, Clover just remembered it as weird, almost surreal.

Clover sat up in bed. She had never been able to understand that memory before – but what about now, after learning everything she now knew? Perhaps it could clarify things a little.

Slowly, she began to sift through her memories, carefully locating the right one, recalling all the details she could. A residual fear of the unknown, an unwillingness to remember, tried to hinder her thoughts as they closed in on that moment in the past, but she was able to push through them. She was making headway again, on the move, and she'd be damned if she let the fear of something that had already happened get in her way.

 _Besides_ , she thought, as the past came closer and closer to her present, _I made a promise, that night in Oscar's backyard. That I'd do whatever it took, overcome any pain or fear – anything, if it meant finding the truth about…everything that's happened. Anything to find Gavin and put him away. To understand Jerry. To get payback for Sam. And even to- to redeem me, too._

It had taken place in July, she remembered, about a month after the disaster of Operation Horoscope, and three months after Blaine and Sam began dating in April. It was just after the end of her Junior year.

* * *

 _Her compowder beeped as just as she shut her closet door. Annoyed, she snatched it off her desk and flipped it open, and saw Jerry's face flash into existence on the screen._

" _What is it, Jer?" She snapped, a little unkindly. Since Sam had gotten together with Blaine she had been short with everyone, and, to her distant amazement and concern, it didn't bother her or make her feel guilty in the slightest, and having lasted three months already it showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. "I have a final at eight tomorrow, so if you're going to interrupt my cramming-"_

" _Clover," Jerry growled, with a tiredness and latent, simmering anger that gave pause to her passive-aggressiveness, "get in here. Get in here now, or there'll be bloodshed."_

 _Clover blinked, her own annoyance evaporating in the face of Jerry's irritation. But annoyed or not, she still had a final to study for. "Look, Jerry, I'll be in in a couple of hours, alright? Just give me some time-"_

 _The connection terminated, and the next thing she knew the closet she had just closed opened again and sucked her screaming into a dark WOOHPing tunnel. The thrilling fear of falling uncontrollably mixed with concern over her lost studying time, but also an incipient worry. What was so urgent that Jerry had to see her right away? And, for that matter, why was he in such a bad mood? She knew that his spirits had been low for the past few months – as had her spirits, and the spirits of almost everyone at WOOHP – but to the best of her knowledge it had never gotten to the point of anger, even in the dreadful aftermath of Operation Horoscope._

 _She scarcely had time to pose these questions to herself before a light emerged at the end of the tunnel, as a hatch opened and she flew out of it, landing surprisingly upright in an office chair whose upholstery cushioned the force of what would otherwise have been a painful impact. Blinking a few times, she took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart and slowly took her bearings._

 _She was in Jerry's conference room, a spartan room consisting of little more than a plain metal table, polished to the point of shining, surrounded by similarly-plain and -shiny metal chairs. The wall at the end of the room, behind the head of the table, was embedded with a large TV screen, currently off. On the wall at the other end of the room, next to the door, was mounted a large WOOHP seal cast in polished metal, with a bright silver W superimposed over a pale blue globe. And in the chairs sat…_

 _Jerry, in his usual place in the Director's chair at the head of the table, just to Clover's right. He did not, Clover noticed, even so much as raise an eyebrow at her arrival; he was hunched over the table, his face buried in a manila folder, his fingers tightly gripping a thick sheaf of stapled pages inside it. Though his face was angled down, almost out of her view, Clover was nonetheless able to see some of his features from the side – a scowl, writ plainly, and deep bags under his eyes. At once she felt such an urgent impulse of sympathy, compassion, and shared commiseration for her old boss and friend. The past few months had been hard on everyone – but mostly on him. The aborted missions, the kidnapped and murdered informers, even the dead Agents, Managers, and Spies – no one took it better, and no one took it worse, than Jerry did._

 _Sitting perversely at Jerry's right hand, in the Deputy Director's chair, was Patrick Alister. Where Jerry was slouched over the table, so low that he might almost be lying on it, Patrick sat ramrod straight against the back of his chair. Yet despite his stiffness he didn't seem very tense; if anything, he seemed positively relaxed, with one leg crossed over the other and his long, dismissive face detachedly examining the fingernails on his right hand. His suit was sharp and crisp, too, in contrast to Jerry, whose tie was loosened and collar was wrinkled and unbuttoned. His face was fixed in a neutral expression, but Clover could detect a hint of smugness in his eyes, which was revealed when he looked up from his fingernails at her arrival. He gave her a tight, contemptuous quirk of the lips in greeting, but not a smile, and said nothing._

 _And in the other chairs sat…no one. Clover blinked again. Was this what Jerry had called her for? A talk with Patrick Alister?_ What's going on?

" _Uh, hi, Jerry," she began hesitantly, straightening herself in her seat. "What's-"_

 _Jerry cut her off neatly for the second time that day. "Patrick here is trying to twist my tail," he said slowly, with the sound of speaking through clenched teeth. With a deep sigh, he sat up in his chair and opened his mouth, loosening his jaw and confirming Clover's intuition. He shut the manila folder in front of him and pushed it to his left, to her. "Take a look at this nonsense."_

 _Clover reached across the table and brought the folder to her, while Patrick watched her intently and Jerry stared blankly, grimly ahead of him, at the WOOHP seal on the wall in front of him. She looked down at the cover, also bearing the WOOHP seal, then at the words beneath it._

Operational File: Magic _, it read._ Report # 1 – Barcelona, _and then the date._

 _Clover looked up at Jerry. "What's this supposed to be?"_

 _Patrick smiled at last, while Jerry continued staring at the WOOHP seal and said nothing._

 _Feeling unsettled and very much confused, Clover frowned and opened the folder, wishing very much that she were back at Mali-U – even studying for her final, as boring and disinteresting as it would have been, would have been preferable to this awkward and weird experience._

 _She was greeted at once by a page carrying a long disclaimer, warning her against unauthorized reading or possession of the file in front of her and reminding her that such offenses were punishable by imprisonment in a WOOHP incarceration facility. At the bottom of the page, however, the section instructing her to return the file if it ever went missing was blank – no return location was written into the space provided._

 _Clover blinked. Whatever this was, it was very new – perhaps not even entered into the WOOHP operational database or information network yet._

 _Her unease growing, Clover flipped the page and began reading the file. It turned out to be a fifteen-page document written in Spanish. An attached translation – a very good translation, if her high school Spanish was any standard to measure by – indicated that it was supposedly a high-level ETOKA document concerning one of their smuggling operations moving drugs, arms, and people from Morocco and Algeria to Spain. She skimmed through the document, not understanding half of what it was talking about, even with the translation._

" _Who translated this?" Clover asked offhandedly, still flipping through the pages. Investigations Section was responsible for processing and analyzing recovered evidence and clues, among other things, and making translations was one of the things they did. The quality of this particular translation, however, seemed out of this world to her – so good, in fact, that she suspected that it might have come directly from the hand of Rick Boring, the Head of Investigations, himself._

 _To her surprise, Jerry replied – though not quite to her. "God translated it, didn't He, Patrick?" He said contemptuously, before taking his eyes off the WOOHP seal to look at Clover. "Don't bother asking, Clover. He won't tell you anything."_

 _Across from her, Patrick scoffed but kept on smiling. He rose from his seat and folded his hands behind his back, slowly making his way around the table before stopping just behind the Director's chair, within arm's reach of it. His eyes now rested on the WOOHP seal instead of Jerry's._

 _Clover watched the two of them, Patrick now looming just behind Jerry, then looked back down at the file in front of her. Though over half of its contents were unfamiliar to her, its detail was unmistakable. Furthermore, it was possessed of an impressive topicality – for some time the Spanish CITCO and Interpol had been screaming at WOOHP for anything that could help them fight smuggling in the Western Mediterranean, a topic that Patrick and, occasionally, Oscar Goodluck brought up regularly at the boring executive meetings that Clover, as Head of Spies, was obligated to attend._

 _If the document was authentic and genuine it could be treasure. The problem was, there was no reason to believe it was. Clover liked Rick Boring and talked to him often about WOOHP work and life; in their talks about WOOHP work, the Head of Investigations had explained to her that every week WOOHP came into possession of dozens of documents purportedly from the Syndicate. Most were fakes fabricated by would-be informers hoping to get themselves onto the WOOHP payroll; others were deliberate ETOKA disinformation, or genuine but containing nothing useful. Every now and then, Rick had laughed, a document or two turned out to be real and useful – but usually only in hindsight, after it had already been rejected and disposed of._

But if this _is_ real, _Clover had thought,_ if it is, then this could be the best news we've had in a long time!

 _She pressed on, wanting to accept the file in front of her. Her eyes landed on a scrawl on the last page of the document. "Whose initials are these?" She asked._

 _Jerry snorted. "Don't ask me. Ask the expert." A jerk of his head indicated he knew that Patrick was standing right behind him._

" _Pablo Alonso, the alias of Ricardo Garces, the Syndicate's head man in Catalonia," Patrick said, his Scottish brogue ringing out richly and easily._

 _Clover looked at the document some more. "It's- there's, like, no date on this," she said._

" _It's a draft," Patrick replied evenly. He wore a satisfied expression on his face, and it showed also in the complacent erectness of his posture. "Garces initialed it last Thursday. The finished report with those amendments was sent to the Syndicate Executive Council on Monday, dated accordingly."_

 _Clover's eyes widened. Today was Tuesday. "That's…how…" She tried again. "How did you get it so quickly if they only finished it yesterday?"_

" _Patrick feels unable to share," Jerry said, at the same time as Patrick said, "A new secret source of mine."_

 _Clover looked bewilderedly between the two of them. "Um…" She decided to seek a second – or maybe third – opinion. "What do the Investigators think? Do they say it's good?"_

" _They've not seen it," said Patrick, wandering around the head of the table to tower over Clover – with his height, it was not hard to do. "And what's more," he went on, a little condescendingly, "they're not going to." He shook his head slightly, almost mockingly, to drive home the point._

That makes no sense. _"Wait – why not?"_

 _Icily, Jerry said, "Interpol Secretary-General McGeorge has passed a preliminary opinion, however, hasn't he, Patrick? Patrick showed it to him last night – over a whiskey in New York, at the Plaza, wasn't it?"_

 _Patrick turned to give him an indulgent smile. "At the UN Secretariat," he said._

 _The message could not be more clear, even to Clover, who was still not sure what was going on:_ You're out of the loop, old man. You're a spymaster who doesn't know anything anymore.

 _Jerry, however, didn't seem to take the hint; either that, or he didn't care. Taking it in stride, he said to Clover, "Do you hear that, Clover? The UN Secretariat. See how they open the gates and roll out the red carpet for Patrick."_

 _He cleared his throat, before continuing, "Secretary-General McGeorge is not an especially enthusiastic or excitable person, yet when he telephoned me half an hour ago he was absolutely ecstatic. He even congratulated me. He told me he regards this material as genuine, not disinformation or otherwise fake, and is seeking our permission to-" He stopped as if struck, while Patrick looked at him expectantly. Taking a breath, he went on, "Patrick's permission, I should say," Patrick nodded gratefully at the acknowledgement, "to approve the report for general circulation within Interpol, with discretionary powers for disclosure to national police forces in Southern Europe and North Africa."_

" _Quite impossible, I regret to say," Patrick said, without a touch of regret. "It's for his eyes only – and the Spanish Interior Minister's – for at least a few more weeks."_

" _I'm expecting a phone call from the Minister any minute now," Jerry said drily. "And take note, Clover – this stuff is so hot, it has to be cooled off before it can be distributed." He leaned back in his chair and snorted in derision._

 _Clover frowned, looking back down at the file. "But where does it come from? How did you get it?" She asked again, growing more confused and more uncomfortable by the second, and slightly distressed that several of her questions had gone unanswered._

" _Oh, Patrick's dreamed up a codename, don't you worry. Never been slow on our codenames, have we, Patrick?"_

 _Clover sighed. "No- Jer- can someone just, please, like-" She dropped her head into her hands, sighed again, and looked up again. "Who gave it to us? And who did he give it to? Who's in charge of," she closed the file and reread the cover, "'Operation Magic'?"_

 _Jerry steepled his fingers. "You'll enjoy this," he promised, and stared steadfastly at the table in front of him. Clover looked at him with concern – she had never seen him so angry. His brow and the mostly-bald dome of his head glittered with sweat despite the air conditioning in the room, while his hands trembled and his normally serious, often amused, sometimes affectionate eyes sparkled with rage._

" _Source Wizard," Patrick announced, sucking slightly on his teeth, "is a highly-placed source with access to the most sensitive levels of the ETOKA leadership." With great pomp and circumstance, he finished, "We have dubbed his product 'Magic'."_

" _Now wait for him to tell you why he won't tell you," Jerry said cryptically. Clover looked at him quizzically while Patrick took a deep breath, filling his chest for a long monologue. Like Jerry he, too, was flushed, but with triumph instead of anger. He spoke tonelessly to her, as if testifying to a court._

" _The identity of Source Wizard is a secret which is not mine to divulge. He is the fruit of cultivation by certain…people in WOOHP, people who are bound to me as I am to them." He began pacing around the table, his footsteps falling slowly between his words. "People who are not at all entertained, I should mention, by the recent rate of failure in WOOHP. There's been too much lost. Too much blown, aborted, wasted – too many scandals. I've raised these issues so many times, but I might as well have been speaking to myself for all the attention he's paid me."_

"He _means me," Jerry added unnecessarily._

" _The most basic foundations of methodology and security have wasted away in WOOHP. Too much compartmentalization in the wrong places, and too little in the right ones. There's too much infighting between the branch offices, between the branch offices and Headquarters, and between the different Sections, all stimulated from the top."_

" _Me again," Jerry chimed in._

" _Divide and rule, that's the policy these days. We should be fighting crime, not each other – and, for that matter, fighting real criminals, rather than lunatics with childish gimmicks, stage names, and costumes. We're losing our partners-"_

" _The national police and security services."_

" _-our livelihood, our self-respect. And we've had enough." Patrick paused; by now, he had completed a full circuit around the table and was standing over Clover again. He looked down at her. "We've had a bellyful, in fact."_

 _He held out his hand for the file. With some hesitation, she gave it to him, and he tucked it under his arm preciously, smiled at her, and promptly left the room._

" _And like anyone who's ever had enough, he wants more!" Jerry shouted after him, but by then Patrick was already gone._

 _Clover released a breath she didn't know she was holding, and turned to look at Jerry, who was breathing heavily, red-faced. "Are…you okay, Jer?"_

" _Patrick Alister," Jerry said, ignoring her, "would sell his mother for a knighthood, and WOOHP for a seat in the House of Lords." Gradually, the color drained from his face._

 _There was a pause, before Clover spoke again, "Assuming that Wizard is genuine-"_

" _Nothing is genuine anymore!" Jerry exclaimed._

 _For a minute Clover was afraid that Jerry would fly into another barely-restrained rage. When he didn't, she went on, "Even if it isn't, a lot of people are buying it. That George guy, and the Minister in Spain." She paused. "What are you going to?"_

 _Jerry scratched his pencil-thin mustache. "It's a fraud, I'm sure," he said. "And it'll become obvious that it is one soon enough. But in the meantime I do wonder…"_

" _What's up?"_

 _Jerry was silent for a moment, before continuing, "Who would pick_ Patrick _, of all people? No, it must be a fraud. No one in their right mind would trust Patrick Alister to lead the way on anything – and certainly not someone high up in the Syndicate, as Patrick claims his 'Wizard' is. But I do wonder – who else is involved in Patrick's scheme, and why are they involved with it?"_

* * *

A gentle rain began to fall, and the drops of water on the window distorted the view of WOOHP Headquarters in the distance, where all of her memories took place.

Clover pondered his last questions. As it turned out, she knew who was involved in Operation Magic – they all did, after Patrick's Magic task force was greenlit by the UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Protection. Patrick, naturally, ran the show, and it was no surprise that bitter, creepy Tomas Eviline managed to find himself a role. But to her surprise, Rick Boring and even Blaine had also been invited to join, and to her even greater surprise, had accepted their invitations. So – Patrick, Tomas, Rick, and Blaine.

" _Three of them, and Patrick."_ Jerry's words; Clover closed her eyes as she tried to remember when she first heard him say that.

She opened them again. It was known who was involved with Operation Magic – so the real question was why. And in that question, Clover thought, lay the essence of Jerry's suspicion of a traitor in WOOHP.

 _Three of them, and Patrick_ , Clover thought, struggling to see WOOHP Headquarters through the watery glass of the window. If there was any part of their motivations that had been unclear to Jerry, that meant that they had been keeping something from him. And if they had been keeping secrets from Jerry, it wasn't inconceivable that they – or one of them, anyways – was hiding treachery.

Clover paused to consider that thought. It seemed absurd – and Alex and Dina, if she had told them about it, would probably have told her so to her face, though Dean probably wouldn't. And it didn't seem absurd to Clover now, either, though for much different reasons than those Dean would have had.

Those reasons, for suspecting Patrick, Tomas, Rick, and – it pained her to admit it – even Blaine, were, as before, buried deep in her memory, in remembrances she had spent over a year trying to forget. And they were inseparably intertwined – she knew this – with the story of Operation Magic, and what it eventually became.

It had begun as one report in the conference room two Julys ago. Now, from what Alex had told her, Magic _was_ WOOHP these days. And the fact of the matter was that somewhere in that change, between its humble beginnings and its takeover of WOOHP, Magic had played a critical part in breaking Jerry down, just as important as the string of WOOHP mission failures. Operation Impeachment may have finished Jerry's career, and the accident on the highway his life, but the truth was, Clover now realized, that they were just finishing a long process that was carried out in large part by Magic. The failed missions were half of the story; Operation Magic was the other.

And in that story, Clover knew, were included the stories of Patrick, Tomas, Rick and Blaine. Three of them, and Patrick, who played leading roles in the drama that ultimately saw Jerry out and themselves in.

Clover turned away from the window, a seriousness coming over her. She would have to dredge up more memories and sift through them, reanalyzing them in light of things she had learned, of things she knew now. She would have to me meticulous in her recollections, and precise in her rethinking. It would be difficult, awkward, and maybe painful. But until Alex got the Impeachment file, and until Dina found Sam – if she ever did – it was all she had. And, to her amazement, it was something that Clover felt she could do.

She sat down at her desk and picked up her pen, then reconsidered and grabbed her phone.

 _If I'm going to go over Operation Magic again, I'll need the Magic paper trail. And for paper, I know just who to call._


End file.
